


gethsemane

by silkskin



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Campaign 05: A Crown of Candy, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Groundhog Day AU, Non-Linear Narrative, some references to depression and suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28519161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkskin/pseuds/silkskin
Summary: Calroy heaves him over parapets. The seconds pass like days as he falls. The ground comes steadily closer, and there is nothing but the darkness of the night, the agony in his limbs, and the echoing harshness of Calroy’s voice.The King of Candia strikes into the ground, and the world goes black.——————————Amethar Rocks wakes up to the sight of golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola on the side of a ship. A guttural yell bursts from his throat, jerks him into sitting—and is cut off quickly. It is quiet. The pain is gone. There is no wind in his ears, no knife in his back, no poison in his veins.A dream.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 71
Collections: Dimension 20 Big Bang





	gethsemane

**Author's Note:**

> woof. here it is. my slightly late d20 big bang fic that has consumed my entire life for the past month. oh my god. this is the longest fic i've written to date (my last being like. 12k words LOL) and i am so unbelievably proud of it and also so unbelievably glad it's done. i've learnt so much from writing it! 
> 
> [this fic has a playlist if you would like to listen along!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Zi4mCO1hxoKtoRlRXNhJt?si=zTa-O2-LSxyVcEA3SaBdAA) the main theme of this fic is [rachmaninoff's rhapsody on a theme of paganini](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k6R3g_51bY) which is why some of it is in that playlist.
> 
> and of course thank you so much to my artist, [em @luumenss](https://twitter.com/luumenss) for their absolutely fantastic accompanying art for my fic, which is embedded at the beginning!
> 
> so with no further ado, here we go! i am about to go take a nap bc i am running on 3 hours sleep and have been writing nonstop for the past 24 hours so. i hope you all enjoy!!
> 
> oh yeah, and calroy is pretty explicitly not a cake in this one. sorry

——————————

It’s a beautiful night, Amethar thinks.

Moonlight falls like silver on the castle battlements, and the air is cool, crisp with the Candian sweetness that he had missed so dearly during his water voyage with the Dairy Islanders. He feels his head clear just from breathing it in, and as he walks, Calroy by his side, there is a peace the settles at the bottom of his ribcage, even after his and Caramelinda’s fight.

Conversation with Cal is easy as it always is, and Amethar welcomes the distraction. He pauses by the castle balustrade—he wants to freeze time right here. Right now. Here, looking out on a sleeping, peaceful Candia, the girls safe and his family reunited. Before he has to return to his and Caramelinda’s quarters, before he has to think about his duties, before the war begins again in the morning.

“Look at all those tents,” Cal says, and time ticks relentlessly forward. “Like twenty years of peace just flew by, huh?”

“I guess so,” Amethar says, rueful. “Right back to where we started.”

Cal turns. “I guess so.”

A sudden, immeasurable force at the small of his back sends Amethar stumbling forward. Amethar gasps, chokes, shudders involuntarily—a blinding pain as something makes its way through his ribs, a familiar searing agony—Amethar recognises the poison eating through him before he even registers the blade.

Panic leaps into his throat; thoughts racing even as he feels his body grow sluggish, as he succumbs to a paralysis much worse than before. Assassins, watersteel, _where’s Cal—_

A familiar gloved hand grips his shoulder.

The blade _twists_ in his back.

Amethar’s vision goes white with the pain, and he chokes on blood and sugar as water burns through his flesh and forces tears to his eyes.

When Calroy speaks, his voice is unrecognisable in its malice.

“You know what I always hated about you, Amethar?”

Amethar struggles for air, an incomprehensible horror overtaking his senses, disbelief throwing his thoughts in disarray.

No, no, no, _no_ —

“You were so damned lucky. Fifth in line for the throne and the crown rests on your head, and each of your sisters better and more clever than you.”

Calroy’s voice is a blade of its own at Amethar’s ear, and he can barely register the words themselves as he does the feeling of them, the treachery of them, the agony that eats up at him more painfully than any watered blade.

He killed Rococoa, Amethar thinks, and the world falls apart by the seams. The grief comes flooding back to him like it was yesterday, like twenty years were nothing, right back to where we started—

Calroy squeezes his shoulder one final time and twists the knife further into his back and sends blistering spasms up Amethar’s body.

“I wonder if they’ll call you Amethar the Unfallen after this,” Calroy says, and Amethar is numb with heartache. “Here’s to a future you can’t ruin.”

Calroy heaves him over parapets.

The seconds pass like days as he falls.

The ground comes steadily closer, and there is nothing but the darkness of the night, the agony in his limbs, and the echoing harshness of Calroy’s voice.

There is a soft light at the corner of his eye—Amethar turns to face it move across the horizon, and can’t quite process what he’s seeing.

He can’t—

No—

The King of Candia strikes into the ground, and the world goes black.

Amethar Rocks wakes up to the sight of golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola on the side of a ship.

A guttural yell bursts from his throat, jerks him into sitting—and is cut off quickly. It is quiet. The pain is gone. There is no wind in his ears, no knife in his back, no poison in his veins.

He takes a slow breath. The Bel Baby. There is the creaking of footsteps above him—Jet and Ruby, who woke up early to watch the sunrise. How does he know that? He—he dreamt it.

A dream.

Amethar puts his head in his hands and lets out a shuddering sigh. The echo of Calroy’s hand on his shoulder burns. 

A nightmare.

Amethar stands, stretches his sore muscles. It had been so vivid, and he doesn’t know what might’ve prompted it. A thought occurs to him briefly. A vision from Lazuli? But Calroy—the thought of his betrayal seems so absurd to him even now. He reaches with his arms, touches the point at which he remembers the blade made contact. Feels nothing but the smooth fabric of his undergarments, the lines of familiar scars. 

He relaxes, shaking himself off, and makes his way to the deck.

When he reaches the open air, he takes note of the sun’s position—almost noon. He’d slept in. The sharp familiar breeze of the Cola fills his lungs and calms him. It feels good to be home. The thought of being back at the castle to face Calroy and Caramelinda fills Amethar with both an eagerness and a sense of dread. His head aches, throbbing like he’d had one too many brewed sodas, not helped by the loud squawking of honey herons that swarm the ship as they sail.

“Amethar!” Manta Ray Jack calls, striding over from his place at the rigging. “Finally risen from your beauty sleep, I see.”

Amethar brushes his thoughts away and laughs, clapping Manta Ray on the back. The shorter man goes stumbling forward with the weight of it, but grins. 

“We’ll be comin’ into Dulcington Port by midnight,” Manta Ray says. “Finally get you home.”

“Pops!” Amethar hears, and he doesn’t even need to turn to know that Jet and Ruby are on the bow of the ship. He calls back a greeting anyway. Ruby’s standing on the bulwarks, striking a pose; the sun glints off her tiara as Jet grins and waves at Amethar.

“Couldn’t get her off,” Manta Ray says, shaking his head. “All those near-death experiences and they still have the taste for danger. Just as dumb and headstrong as their father!”

Manta Ray punches him lightly in the shoulder, and Amethar chuckles, even as the words sting. He hopes not. His usual jokes don’t come, stuck in his throat like an uncomfortable pit. 

“Oi, Amethar,” Jack says, sobering. “Don’t think I don’t know when you’re in a bad mood. Cheer up, man! You’re home. The past is the past. You’ll get through this, I know it.”

Amethar gives him a grateful smile. “Thanks, Manta Ray.”

Manta grins and pats his back. 

There’s a punctuated snore— “Oi,” Manta Ray calls, as one of his crew members at the rigging jerks out of a doze, “Mozza, what kinda nerve is that, dozing off in front of the King of Candia?”

The crew member mutters an apology; Manta Ray gives Amethar a wink and heads back up to the wheel, shouting at a couple more crew members.

A moment later, a loud familiar shout comes from close by, and Amethar winces as Theo comes crashing up from below deck, shoving at a blue sprinkle that has jumped into his face. Amethar sidesteps out of the way and raises an amused eyebrow. 

“Afternoon, Theo.”

Theo looks over at him, sheepish, and lowers his head in greeting, all while holding a jerking Sprinkle at arms’ length. 

“Afternoon, my King. My apologies, Sprinkle apparently doesn’t take to the dairy foods onboard.” He doesn’t waste a second in pinpointing the girls, and shouting in alarm, “Ruby, Jet—get _off_ the railing, are you girls insane—”

Amethar chuckles, leaves Theo too it as he goes to stand at the aft. 

Something crashes into the deck just right of him, and Amethar jumps, almost letting out a shout of shock. He spins, staring; a lifeless honey heron, eyes gaunt and grey in a drained death. Amethar sighs, looking up. 

Cumulous stands up on the foremast, a blue cotton candy shadow against the light of the sun. He’s holding Lazuli’s bow—Ruby’s bow. Amethar swallows and sighs, meets Cumulous’ eye and gives him a wave. Points to the bird, shoves his thumb over his shoulder in a universal sign of _‘get that out of here’_. Cumulous nods back, solemn. His hand darts out, and another honey heron falls like a stone, but this time Cumulous tips the edge of the green bow out in a mechanical movement that sweeps the bird’s corpse off into the water. Amethar sighs. He tears his eyes away from the bow in Cumulous’ hands and the pendant around his neck.

The dream still nags at his mind, but as the day passes, bright and warm, the sailing air crisp and the ache of a brand new tattoo on his back, he finds himself relaxing. The ship does indeed pull into Dulcington a dozen hours later, quiet and sleepy as the rest of the small town sleeps. The moon sways silver over the night mists. Amethar, fidgety and anxious, follows Theo across town. A weariness hangs over the group even as they arrive home, even among Jet and Ruby. So much has changed—they have not returned home as the same people who left it.

When they arrive at the gates, he doesn’t manage to stop Theo from pulling out his scroll and announcing: “King Amethar of the House Rocks, First of His Name, Sovereign Ruler of Candia and the Sugarlands, Duke of Cookieshire—”

Jet jumps where she stands. “Wait, do mine!”

“Princess Jet of the House Rocks, First of Her Name, Duchess of Gumberly, Lady of the Realm, Bastard of the Realm.”

“Now me!” Ruby calls.

“Princess Ruby of House Rocks, First of Her Name, Duchess of Piehole, Lady of the Realm, Bastard of the Realm, Master Acrobat.”

“I can’t believe you keep all those scrolls under your armour,” Amethar says.

There’s a shout, and then Limon calls down to them. He staggers over the parapets; Amethar steps forward and catches him before he hits the ground. 

“Oh, your Majesty, you should’ve let me fall,” he stammers, whiny drawl echoing out even as he rolls out of Amethar’s arms and grovels on the ground. “I deserve it for losing you all in Comida!”

“Yes. Limon, squire, I sentence you to death,” Cumulous says, immediately lifting his staff.

“Okay, okay, okay—” Amethar says, hands up to placate Cumulous.

They're interrupted by the gates opening. Queen Caramelinda runs out, still in her night dress and silk bonnet, a lantern in her hand. There are tears on her cheeks as she scoops the girls up in a crushing embrace, and despite it all, it brings a smile to Amethar’s face. 

“My sweethearts, my darlings. You’re okay. I’m so happy you’re alive, and you did nothing wrong,” Caramelinda says.

“We actually did a lot of things right,” Jet replies.

“Yeah, we did,” Ruby tacks on.

And then Calroy comes barrelling out, wearing the most embellished black pants Amethar has ever seen. Elaborate golden embroidery traces its way across the waist and down the sides to the cuffs, matching the gold of his sleeves and sword. Red lace decorate the hems. A laugh bursts out of Amethar at the sight of it. 

“Now, those are some pants!” Amethar cries, pulling Cal into an embrace. Despite weeks of hard travel, Cal looks surprisingly no worse for wear, besides a new scar at his neck, healing red and stark against his skin. Amethar has to hold himself back from reaching out and touching it, apology already on his tongue.

“Well, I’ve had to upgrade in the absence of Candia’s greatest fighter!” Cal teases, voice breaking, and Amethar feels his gut drop as Cal goes to wipe away tears. 

“Oh my god, Cal, no.”

A swell of emotion overtakes Amethar, watching his family be reunited, as they laugh and cry and embrace. There’s a truth that rings hollow in his very bones: he would do anything to keep them safe. And for a moment, a tiny fraction of a second Amethar wishes he could make last a lifetime, it seems like everything will be okay.

“And where is the Chancellor?” Cal asks, sudden concern in his voice.

Amethar takes a deep breath, but Jet, stepping forward without hesitation, beats him to it. “The Chancellor sacrificed himself to save Prince Liam and the rest of us. It was a beautiful moment of heroism that the Sugar-Plum Fairy herself will tell all of her friends about for days to come.”

The sorrow settles, the reality of the war sinking in, never really leaving. Amethar swallows, tries to meet Caramelinda’s stern eyes from across the group—but she’s pointedly avoiding his gaze. Amethar swallows, hard, guilt pouring back in waves. Caramelinda bustles Theo and the girls back up to the castle.

“War’s coming,” she says, raw and harsh, and Amethar has known her long enough to know she’s speaking through grief. “It’s time to stop fooling around.”

Cal turns to Cumulous, “Perhaps we should take a little tour of the castle right now to see if there’s any arcane things you know how to awaken that we don’t?”

“I will try,” Cumulous says, and they walk off.

Finally, Caramelinda catches Amethar’s eye, face still unreadable, and he swallows and follows her, dread rolling in the pit of his stomach. When he reaches their chambers, she immediately stops, grips her dress in her hands, and turns to face him.

“How could you never tell me?” she says, voice carefully controlled, as if she’s barely able to hold herself back.

I don’t know, Amethar thinks, but doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to be a genius to know that isn’t what Caramelinda wants to hear. “I didn't tell anybody. I mean, my sisters knew because they were my sisters. And Manta Ray Jack knew because he was the witness. But I… I thought this was one of those things you could never talk about and it would never be a problem.”

Caramelinda’s eyes flash at that, but Amethar keeps going, tripping over his words. “It was already hard enough for us. I didn’t want to make it harder.”

“You didn’t want to face your problems,” Caramelinda corrects, and he shuts his mouth.

She rubs at her eyes, weariness painted in her movements. “Your sisters knew,” she says softly, and Amethar pretends he doesn’t notice the wetness in her voice. “That means Lazuli knew.”

“…Yeah, she knew.” Amethar says. “I’m sorry.”

“ _You_ not telling me makes sense,” Caramelinda says, voice breaking.“Your sisters may have had a plan, but after they were gone, you were too scared to figure it out! You thought it would go away on its own, like a child.”

She looks out the window, tears no longer hidden. “But Lazuli not telling me—that hurts, because Lazuli I loved with all my heart. And this,” she says, cutting, “is just politics.”

Amethar takes a ragged breath, and can’t find the words to deny it. To do anything except what he’s always done—nothing.

Caramelinda speaks up again. “I suppose you're glad, at least in part, that war is coming and you'll have something to do again.”

“I’m gonna be better,” Amethar finally says, desperate.

Caramelinda looks at him in incredulity. “What does that mean, Amethar?”

“I—I don't know,” he says, faltering. “They tried to kill me twice, and for some reason, I'm still here. So I'm gonna be better.”

“You’re twenty years too late for that,” Caramelinda says. She turns to the door. “Amethar the Unfallen. Let's see if Candia can earn the same title.”

The door slams shut behind her. Amethar sits on the bed, head in his hands. That aching gnawing emptiness he’d felt at the cathedral comes back to him, dragging at his joints until he feels as if he could turn to stone right where he sits. He doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to fix what he’s already done. Lazuli would’ve known what to do. Rococoa, Sapphria, Citrina—they would’ve known. They would never have let this happen in the first place.

A knock sounds at the door, jerks him out of his thoughts. “Amethar—”

Amethar knows he doesn’t quite succeed in putting himself together when Calroy pokes his head around the corner and hesitates.

“Oh,” Cal says, gentle. “Bad time? Good time?”

His voice falls into a teasing lilt, even if the concern on his face is genuine. Amethar lets out a wet laugh, and feels a little lighter at the sight of his best friend.

“Anytime,” Amethar says, throwing Cal a smile.

Cal returns it, and then visibly bolsters himself, always looking forward. He walks over, reaching a hand down to Amethar to take. “Well, instead of being in the place where your wife will come back to go to sleep and maybe make you feel terrible some more, let’s—I don’t know. Wanna go take a shit in a field?”

Amethar breaks into a stupid grin at Cal’s sincerity. He shakes his head, fond, and takes the offered hand, pulling himself up.

“In all honesty, the ramparts of the castle need some tending to and I think we should talk about what we do if Sir Maillard fails to hold them at the Cola River.”

Cal launches into strategy talk as Amethar nods, only half-listening, just trying to steady himself after his fight with Caramelinda. There’s a nagging sense of familiarity in their walk above the ramparts—the memories of last night’s dream itching at the back of his head. He pushes it away.

It’s a beautiful night.

Amethar feels a strange sort of contentment settle in him; the kind that he knows is fleeting and in spite of his pain, and all the more precious for it. The kind he feels he could live in forever.

“Look at all those tents,” Cal says, and forever slips into forward again. “Like twenty years of peace just flew by, huh?”

“I guess so,” Amethar says, rueful. “Right back to where we started.”

Cal turns. “I guess so.”

Amethar frowns, horror settling in as he spins round to face Calroy—

The watersteel dagger plunges into his gut, tears a wretched sound from his throat as blinding pain spasms through him. Calroy lets out a noise of surprise, and then amusement. “Huh. Didn’t think you’d see that coming.”

Amethar fights for breath in vain as the poison makes its way through his system, disbelief and shock and pain turning his mind into glass. Calroy’s hand moves up to grip Amethar’s shoulder, forcing him back until he’s pinned against the castle battlements, as he twists the dagger deeper.

Calroy doesn’t take his eyes off him. “Do you know what I always hated about you, Amethar?”

Amethar looks back, gasping, and thinks: this is worse. Seeing the coldness in Calroy’s expression, the cruelty. The man standing in front of him is not the same man that he knew for the past twenty years, the man who helped raise Jet and Ruby, who ran the kingdom with Caramelinda.

Or maybe it is.

And he’s killing Amethar anyway.

“You were so damned lucky.” Calroy’s voice is dark and cloying. Amethar’s blood seeps through his clothes, staining the blade and Calroy’s hands, dripping from his mouth onto the pink and purple brick. “I mean, fifth in line for the throne and the crown rests on your head. And each of your sisters better and more clever than you.”

It hurts the most, Amethar thinks, because he gets it. Amethar _knows_ , has feared it all his life, had confided much the same to Calroy after the coronation. He’d told him in the privacy of his new quarters—he hadn’t asked for any of this, his sisters should be here instead, he doesn’t know how to be King when all he’s ever been is a soldier—

It hurts the most because Amethar has heard it all before, from himself, and Calroy, his newly appointed right-hand, had squeezed his shoulder and comforted him, gentle smiles and gentler words— _I’m saying this as your friend, you are a good king_ —

“I wonder if they’ll call you Amethar the Unfallen after this,” Calroy says, and smiles, wrenching the daggernone too smoothly out of Amethar’s stomach and watching as he gasps and doubles over. “Here’s to a future you can’t ruin.”

Calroy heaves him over the castle walls, again, and Amethar falls.

The King of Candia hits the ground, and the world goes black.

Amethar Rocks wakes up to the sight of golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola on the side of a ship.

He jerks into sitting, shuddering breaths wracking his body as his hands immediately go to the wound at his gut—there’s nothing there. 

He stumbles out of bed frantically; he’s back on the Bel Baby. 

There are creaking footsteps above him, like yesterday, from Jet and Ruby. Yesterday? Amethar shakes looks at his hands, his clothes, the space at his gut that a dagger should be. There is nothing there, no sign that last night ever happened—but it did. He’s sure of it. He’d felt that pain as clear as day, too familiarly for it to be a dream. He’d lived it before, a nightmare repeating itself.

“What the hell is going on,” he mutters, fear tinging his voice.

He runs out to the deck, and the familiar bright noon sun stares at him. The honey herons squawk from the mast; Ruby and Jet are at the bow. Everything is as it was the day before. Amethar clutches the side of the railing, feels the solid cream-wood beneath his palm and the roaring of blood in his ears, and _doesn’t know what’s happening_.

“Amethar!” Manta Ray calls, striding over from his place at the rigging. “Finally risen from your beauty sleep, I see.”

“Manta Ray,” Amethar says, slightly manic, “something’s going on.”

Manta Ray raises his eyebrows. 

“I’ve been here before,” Amethar tries to explain.

“What are you talkin’ about, Amethar?” Manta Ray says, a confused grin on his face. He raps the wood of his ship lightly with his fist. “‘Course you have. Bel’s been with me ten long years now.”

Amethar shakes his head. “I mean—I’ve lived this day before. I woke up here yesterday, I swear.”

Manta Ray’s grin slowly falls in lieu of concern. Amethar gestures around him. “You… You don’t remember doing any of this before?”

“Sailing down the Cola River with you? Of course—”

Amethar groans, rubs at his eyes. “No, I mean, right here, right now, exactly like this.”

“I don’t—What?“ Manta Ray says, confused. “Amethar, what’s wrong? Are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah, it’s just—”

“Pops!” Jet and Ruby call from the bow of the ship. They wave and grin at him, and Amethar can only muster a raised hand in return. 

“Couldn’t get her off,” Manta Ray says, gesturing towards Ruby posing elegantly on the railing. “All those near-death experiences and they still have the taste for danger. Just as dumb and headstrong as their father!”

Amethar shakes his head, steps back a little at those familiar words. He doesn’t know what’s happening. Why is he the only one who remembers?

“Amethar? Didn’t mean it, promise.” Manta Ray’s voice is gentle and concerned. “Y’sure you’re alright?”

“Fine,” Amethar says. He does feel fine. His body is well-rested, his head is clear, he just _doesn’t know what’s going on._

“Look, you probably just had a nasty dream—Bulb only knows you’ve got a lot on your shoulders,” Manta Ray says. “But you’re home. The past is the past.”

Amethar nods, unconvinced. There’s a loud snore from one of the crew. 

“Oi,” Manta Ray calls, and Mozza jerks out of his doze— _and Amethar knows it’s Mozza, because this has happened before, what in Bulb’s name—_ , “Mozza, what kinda nerve is that, dozing off in front of the King of Candia?”

Mozza mutters an apology; Manta Ray gives Amethar a wink and heads back up to the wheel, shouting at a couple more crew members.

Confusion eats at Amethar until his limbs have ground to a stop, slow and stuck like honey. There’s a loud screech and a crash—Amethar flinches as Theo comes crashing up above deck, Sprinkle leaping into his face. He doesn’t move fast enough to stop Theo from stumbling into him, his armoured glove raising to shield Amethar as Sprinkle shrieks.

“Ah—! Sorry, your majesty,” he says, as Amethar regathers himself. “Sprinkle doesn’t take well to the—”

“Dairy,” Amethar says, interrupting without thinking as the memory rises unbidden in his mind. “Sprinkle hates dairy.”

“Well, yes, though I wouldn’t put it so strongly—” 

Amethar’s lets out a hysterical laugh. “Theo. Theo. My man. What in the world is going on.”

“With... with Sprinkle?” Theo asks, quizzically. “He’ll be fine—”

“No, no!” Amethar throws his arms up in the air. “With today! How did I know Sprinkle hated dairy?!”

“He’s intolerant, actually—”

Amethar puts his hands on Theo’s shoulders, palms meeting the smooth gold of his shoulder-plates. “Theo. I… I think I’ve lived this day before.”

“What?”

“I’ve got the biggest sensation of. Of…”

“Of?” Theo says, concern in his brow.

“Damnit, what’s the word!” Amethar grumbles, racking his brain.

“Your majesty, are you quite alright?”

“Yes! No! I don’t know!”

Theo frowns, pats Amethar on the shoulder. “Maybe you should sit down. I’m sure there’s a physician somewhere on board—”

Amethar groans. “I don’t need a nurse—”

“Still,” Theo says, “If you’re feeling unwell, you should rest. We’ve had a rough couple of weeks, and… well, I for one had hoped I’d never have to feel like this again. No one’d blame you if it’s finally getting to you.”

Amethar opens his mouth to protest, but the bright shock of sincerity in Theo’s eyes stills him. “Yeah,” he says, instead, dropping his arms off Theo’s shoulders. “Sure. Thanks, Theo.”

Theo gives him a steady smile, and then his eyes widen as he looks past Amethar’s shoulder. “Ruby, Jet, get _off_ the railing, what kind of reckless behaviour—sorry, my King—girls, we’re on board a _ship_ —”

Amethar lets him pass, suddenly at a loss. He’s fine, he knows he is, but Theo’s mention of the war makes him feel uneasy. Every day makes it all the more clearer that there’s no escaping it. The past is rearing it’s ugly head again, and now Amethar’s being forced to relive the present like some kind of cruel joke. A thump on the deck beside him knocks him out of his thoughts, and Amethar takes only a brief look at the honey heron in front of him before looking up at Cumulous. The monk does the same to another honey heron, and Amethar watches as that one falls onto the deck too. 

He turns to face the water and tries to steady himself, too uncertain to do anything but watch the hazel river rush past, roaring and relentless, as unstoppable as time itself.

——————————

When they reach Dulcington, the familiarity of stepping onto the docks of the sleeping city makes Amethar’s skin crawl. Cola laps gently against the side of the wharf, and the quiet feels like the stillness before a storm, a stillness that makes Amethar fidget and want to draw his weapon to prepare for something only he can see coming. But Theo is still giving him concerned glances, and Amethar uses the weight of his knight’s worry to ground himself. 

The castle approaches, and the sight of it, once homely and welcoming, looms before him in uncertainty. Theo, much to Amethar’s chagrin, makes their return as formal as he had last time. This time, when Limon begins to fall, he steps forward to catch the lemon cough-drop as he stumbles and falls from the castle walls.

The gates rattle open, the bridge lowering, and Caramelinda runs out in her pale pink nightgown, making a beeline for the girls and sweeping them up in a crushing embrace. She’s crying, unfaltering in her love as she whispers comforts into the girls’ hair, and Amethar aches.

Caramelinda brushes Ruby’s hair behind her ear. “Oh, girls, listen to me, you did nothing wrong.”

And then—Calroy runs out. Amethar’s breath catches in his throat; he’s wearing the same showy pants that he had been yesterday, wearing the same expression, the same look of sheer relief and joy as his eyes find Amethar. 

And Amethar can’t—he can’t—

Cal barrels into him, hugging him tightly; Amethar leans into him instinctually, and then freezes, arms hovering, as the truths he knows fight against each other. Truth: the man with his arms around Amethar is the closest confidant of half his life, and the familiarity of him by his side aches with rightness, with _home_ —

Truth: the man pulling back and smiling at him like the sun is the same man who plunged a dagger in him in what felt like yesterday, laughed as the poison spread through his body, paralysing him in much the same way Amethar feels paralysed now—

Calroy raises his eyebrow at Amethar’s stricken expression, grinning, “What, thought I wouldn’t make it out of Comida? Thought you’d gotten rid of me, huh?” 

Amethar still can’t move. Calroy nudges him. “Aw, don’t look so distraught, I forgive you. Hey, here, look at my new pants!” He winks. “I had to upgrade in absence of Candia’s greatest fighter.”

Amethar looks—the same black and red and embroidered gold—and the surrealness of it all finally snaps him back into moving. Can both be true at once? “Calroy, what—”

“Enough!” Caramelinda shouts, and then the brilliant coral of the Candian grass turns to thick toffee underfoot—Amethar jerks, finds that the kids had been attempting to sneak away under the commotion. Caramelinda’s back in mom-mode: one scolding later and the kids are slumping back into the castle with Theo. She sends a sharp glance towards Amethar. Calroy shoots him a sympathetic look that Amethar can’t bring himself to return, and then he swallows and slowly follows his wife into the castle.

He’s shaken, feeling as slow and congested as the toffee of Caramelinda’s magic. Amethar is sure what happened yesterday wasn’t a dream, but what does that mean? What does he do? If Calroy had run out, and Amethar had attacked him with his sword in rage, if Amethar had been able to do anything at all in the face of Calroy’s apparent sincerity and relief, at the sight of his best friend—would it stick? Or would he wake up again, thrown back into living this awful day? Amethar walks, and the once homely bricks of Castle Candy seem to close in around him, and the once kindly family portraits that hang on the walls leer down at him in his confusion.

“How could you never tell me?” Caramelinda asks, and Amethar jolts. He had not even realised they’d reached their chambers.

“T-tell you what?” Amethar stammers, and Caramelinda’s eyes widen in enraged disbelief. He remembers too late. “I mean, I didn’t tell anybody—”

“You really thought this little _marriage_ of yours would go away if you just didn’t think about it? If you kept it a secret from your own _wife_?”

“I didn’t want to—to burden you with another one of my mistakes.”

“Well now you’ve burdened all of Candia with it.”

Amethar flinches. He feels jittery at the conversation repeating itself, the familiarity of it doing his head in. Amethar shakes his head, his breathing start to get heavy and uneven. 

“We’re at war, Amethar. Anything else to say for yourself?”

“I just—I’m sorry,” Amethar says, moving to sit on the bed as the walls start to press in. “I need a moment.”

“ _You_ need a moment?” Caramelinda asks, incredulous.

“Yes—look, something’s wrong with today,” Amethar says, trying for honesty. “It’s like, like—” He once again racks his brain for the word he’s thinking of, and this time it comes to him. He snaps his fingers. “—It’s _deja vu_! That’s the word I was looking for.”

Caramelinda doesn’t respond, and when Amethar looks up at her, his gut drops. She’s taut as a wire, seething with rage. Amethar opens his mouth to explain, but it’s too late.

“Is this all a game to you?” Her words strike the air like blades. “What, you’re feeling _deja vu_ over your troublesome wife yelling at you again?”

“Caramelinda, that’s not what I meant—”

“Or is it the war? Finding it a little familiar to the horror of twenty years ago?”

“Cara—”

“Or is it the mistakes, Amethar, that you continue to prove yourself incapable of fixing?”

“Listen to me, please—”

“Well I hope you’re ready for the toll war will take on us; Bulb knows you don’t have many loved ones left to lose.”

Amethar flinches like he’s been slapped. Caramelinda’s jaws clench tight, she lifts her hand to her chest as if to steady herself, shaken by her own words—and then she turns and leaves, door slamming shut behind her.

Amethar’s breaths come thick as marshmallow, hoarse and heavy, and he swears under his breath, leaning back and rubbing his eyes. The day is crashing down around him like an avalanche, time dragging him along to whatever cruel trick the universe seems to be playing on him. He doesn’t understand what’s happening _,_ if any of it is even real.

Amethar looks at his palms, calloused and trembling. 

Feels real, though. Feels real enough to make Amethar want to go into a rage right on his bed, the anxiety eating at him like flames.

There’s a knock at the door. 

“Oh,” Calroy says, gentle. “Bad time? Good time?”

Amethar jerks to face Calroy, to face the genuine concern in his voice. This time, anger and grief flares at the sight of him. Rococoa, Amethar thinks. He killed Rococoa, he killed Rococoa, he _killed Rococoa_ —

“Are you okay?” Calroy asks, and his voice sounds the same as it ever has. “Caramelinda must’ve been upset, but I’m sure you can make it up to her.” He steps closer. “It’s not your fault, you know.”

The comfort rings hollow. “You…“ Amethar starts, accusatory—but he can’t quite manage to get the rest of the words out. Not under the warmth of the candlelight, not under the weight of Calroy’s gaze. Amethar finds himself faltering, doubting and unsteady on his feet.

“This war—it’s not your fault,” Calroy says, firmly, moving to put his arm on Amethar’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get out of here. Go for a walk and cool off.“

Amethar shrugs Calroy’s hand away, rough. A dozen emotions clog up his throat, roiling and turning with their intensity; this is not the Calroy that attacked him last night, and yet it is. His reassurances sit sick in the air, a comfort gone rotten and foul in the light of what Amethar knows now.

“Right. Sorry,” Calroy laughs, awkward. “I’m sure you want some space. We need to talk strategy, but I’ll leave you be to recollect yourself. What say I’ll make some tea, and we can just sit and talk?”

Amethar can only just bring himself to nod. The door clicks behind Calroy. 

He’s running through options in his head like he’s on the battlefield, completely out of his depth. Amethar has the faintest idea to make a run for it—but where does he go? To Theo? Grab the girls and Caramelinda and run back to Manta Ray on the ship, and try again to explain it? Escape from the castle walls that are closing in on him, from this net that he feels tightening around him, one that Calroy is at the centre of?

He turns to the open window and looks out over the estate; he can see from here the Ceresian troops that Calroy had mentioned the night before, huge tents that line the fields and bring the feeling of hopelessness.

Calroy returns, the quiet opening of the door making Amethar jump and turn to face him. Amethar laughs uncertainly. “That was fast.”

Calroy raises his eyebrow, eyes flickering over to the open window and then back. “I’m fast!”

Holding a tray of candyleaf tea, the pale smoke drifting up from the cups, Calroy clicks shut the door again. Amethar feels a sudden sense of panic at being trapped in the room.

“You know what!” Amethar says, suddenly, “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s go for a walk.”

“…What?” 

“We’re walking!”

“Amethar, I—” Cal lets out a frustrated sigh. The mask slipping, Amethar thinks, and he feels it like a punch in the gut, that all these tiny moments were all building up to this. “Shall we head to the parapets? You love the view.”

Amethar lets out a delirious laugh. “I’m good! I’m good, let’s. Let’s go down to the barracks, why don’t we?”

“The. Barracks?” Calroy frowns. “Don’t you want someplace a little less… I don’t know, hectic? Crowded? You seem a bit, manic.”

“No!” Amethar says, clapping his hands together firmly and moving towards the door. “Crowded is fine, crowded is perfect! Let’s do crowded.”

“Amethar—You know what, sure.“ Calroy lets out a laugh, shaking his head. He passes the tea into Amethar’s hands. “Here, you didn’t make me go pester the kitchen staff at 2am for nothing.”

Amethar feels his heartbeat steady as he steps out from the room, as the walls stop feeling like they’re closing in on him. The tea is warm in his hands and sweet on his tongue, and he slows his stride, keeping Calroy in sight at all times. His thoughts feel scrambled, but he’s not letting Calroy get ahead of him this time. Or behind him, he supposes.

The outside air is crisp with the taste of moonlight. Calroy’s struck up some light conversation, but Amethar isn’t listening, eyes darting across the skyline. His heart drops into his stomach; framed against the pink landscape behind the cotton candy fields are the Ceresian tents, beige sheets flapping in the wind. They’re scattered amongst what looks to be Candian mustered troops, but the shape of them stand out, their round gauze loaves in sharp contrast to the round Candian pinks. 

He feels sick. He should—he should run right now, slip away and go warn Theo and defend the castle. But even as the thought crosses his mind, he realises he hasn’t seen a single soldier in Castle Candy that isn’t from Muffinfield. The shock of how deep Calroy’s betrayal runs, how long it had been coming, hits him once again. Amethar takes heaving breaths, suddenly short of air, and his battle-sense kicks in as he calculates the amount of troops on both sides. Even if Theo’s knights and the Tartguard are here, they won’t hold their own against Muffinfield and Ceresians. They’re not prepared. Castle Candy is—it’s—

The sound of Calroy’s footsteps ahead of him on the stone grind to a halt; Amethar’s only just realised he’s stopped walking.

“Amethar?”

“How could you,” Amethar says, and it comes out in barely a breath. He feels light-headed with rage.

“What do you mean?” Calroy says, voice flat.

Amethar gives Calroy a wretched look. “You—”

Suddenly, his knees give way, the teacup he was holding falling to the ground and shattering as he stumbles on the brick. His arm clambers for a hold on the castle wall next to him. The dizziness, the nausea—it strikes Amethar too late that it wasn’t just his anxiety at the root of it. Poison. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The spilled tea trickles through the cracks of the brick.

There’s no one around; they hadn’t yet reached the barracks. Amethar had been too preoccupied with keeping Cal ahead of him to realise that they had been taking the long way round. He can barely move his limbs, can start to feel his vision go dark at the edges as he falls.

Calroy smiles, catching him just before he hits the ground. Amethar tries his best to resist, to fight him off, but his thoughts are sluggish, something tight gripping around his throat as he struggles to breathe. With no small effort, Calroy sits him up against the wall. 

“Finally,” he says, amused. “That should’ve hit you three minutes ago, you know, but with your size, well. It’s not like I’d expect anything less from _the Unfallen._ ”

His title is like blood in Calroy’s mouth. Calroy crouches in front of Amethar, tilting his head mockingly.

“You know what I always hated about you, Amethar?”

And Amethar can do nothing but listen, again, as his vision blurs and he breathes air that feels thick as cotton. 

“You were so damned lucky.” The words don’t sting any less, repeated over and over. They stick in Amethar’s mind like honey, like barbs against his lungs. Every breath hurts.

“You know, it hurts to have all of your plans fail, but they say improvisation is the better part of planning, so I was happy to take advantage of that opportunity when it presented itself, Amethar. You know, even this,” he picks up the shattered teacup handle, twirling it deftly between his fingers, “wasn’t my first plan. I went to so much effort to get my hands on a water-steel for myself before Alfredi’s death, only for you to avoid me! What a shame. There’s not quite as much satisfaction like this, I must admit.”

Amethar’s vision gets darker, and he tries desperately to lift his hands, and only manages to scrabble feebly at the ground underneath him. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“I wonder if they'll still call you Amethar the Unfallen after this,” Calroy snarls, and then stands. “Here's to a future you can't ruin.”

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Amethar can only think about how exhausted he is, how lost he feels as he dies _again_. The poison squeezes at his throat as it spreads through his veins, his vision blurring and fading before him, Calroy’s eyes, cold and unflinching—

Amethar Rocks wakes up to the sight of golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola on the side of a ship.

He gasps, rolls over and heaves in choking breaths; the poison is gone, the pain as well. Still, his whole body wracks with spasms like phantom pains as his limbs seemingly comes back to life. Amethar lets out a string of curses despite of it, clenching his fists.

“Fucking—” Amethar roars, in between wheezes, “Stupid timelines, stupid magic, stupid—Lazuli! Dumb Candian magic, what do I _do_!”

There’s a sharp crackling sound at his palms, and Amethar yanks his arms up and away from the wood; he can’t go into a rage onboard the Bel Baby, Manta would kill him, reset the next day or not.

He growls, stomping out of the room and onto the upper decks with a vengeance.

“Amethar!” Manta Ray Jack calls, striding over from his place at the rigging. “Finally risen from your beauty sleep, I see.”

Amethar doesn’t respond, just finds himself leaning out against the balustrade, feeling trapped on this same ship, on this same day.

Manta raises his eyebrows. “You alright, Amethar?”

He sighs, crossing his arms and watching the surf that crashes against the side of the ship. “Fine, Manta Ray. Just tired.”

Manta Ray whistles. “Woke up on the wrong side o’ the bed this morning, huh? Well you won’t catch me botherin’ ya—just letting you know we’ll be comin’ into Dulcington Port at midnight. Finally get you home.”

The thought of it makes Amethar feel sick, and he turns away from Manta Ray’s earnest face.

Manta Ray shouts over at his dozing crewmate. “Oi, Mozza! What kinda nerve is that, dozin’ off in front of the King of Candia?”

There’s the sound of running footsteps and a shout, and Amethar sidesteps Theo as he barrels past him onto the deck.

“Watch it, Theo,” he says.

“So sorry, your majesty,” Theo bows, stiff, as he wrestles his familiar into submission. “Sprinkle doesn’t take well to the dairy on board.”

Amethar nods, barely listening. “Go get the princesses down from the balustrade if you can.”

Theo perks up. “The balustrade? Bulb above—Jet, Ruby, get off there, are you girls insane—”

Amethar lets him pass, hates the disorientation of hearing the same words over and over again. At a sudden squawk and a thump beside him, he jerks his head and finds the body of soul-drained honey heron sitting on the deck. 

“Cumulous! Will you stop that!?” Amethar shouts. Cumulous doesn’t respond, but the second honey heron goes flying off into the river rather than on the deck. 

The monk is up in the crow’s nest as he had been yesterday and the day before, spindly blue fingers clutched tightly around Lazuli’s bow. Amethar draws in a rattling breath at the sight of the emerald green, and then after a moment, signals at Cumulous to come down.

Cumulous tilts his head, and then descends, agility moving his limbs light as sugar-silk, dancing off the rigging and sails until he lands softly in front of Amethar.

“King Amethar?”

“Cumulous,” Amethar says, rushed, “how much do you know of Lazuli’s magic?”

The monk purses his lips, gently lifts the bow in front of them. “I have spent my entire life studying it.”

“So you would… be able to tell if it’s around?”

“Like in this bow?” he says, lifting the weapon.

“No, like—” Amethar clenches and unclenches his hands. “Okay. This is going to sound weird. But I think I’m in one of her spells.”

“…How so?”

“I think it’s a time spell. Or something. I think I’m living this day over and over again.”

Cumulous remains skeptical. “Like how Ruby has her visions before they happen?”

“No. This is different somehow. I woke up yesterday—I guess, today? But it felt like yesterday. And I lived through the whole day. And… changed it too,” Amethar says, remember how he had made Calroy poison him this time. “But I woke up again, and the day had restarted, and no one else seems to remember…”

Amethar trails off as he looks back at Cumulous and sighs. He snaps his fingers, peeved. “Oi. My eyes are up here.”

Cumulous drags his gaze away from Payment Day and looks up. “Ah. Yes. Sorry. Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?”

Amethar groans. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“It’s just… a temporal loop only assigned to you? Multiple times over? That’s incredibly powerful magic. If Lazuli was capable of that, so long after her death, she is a greater mage than even I knew.”

Amethar throws his hands up into the air. “I don’t know! Maybe it’s not Lazuli, then. I just know I’ve definitely been through this day before. I think.”

Cumulous gives him a pitying look—Amethar groans. He knows he’s not the smartest person, but he also knows he’s not dreaming this.

“Look, I know saying it out loud sounds stupid. But Lazuli would know what to do, and you and Theo are the closest people I have to her, and Theo thinks I’m fruit-loopy—”

“My King, I promise I’m trying to help, but this is confusing.”

Amethar halts, frustrated. “Nevermind, Cumulous. You’re right, it’s impossible. Thanks anyway.”

“My King—”

Amethar stomps back beneath deck and to his room, landing on his bed with a flop of his sheets.

His mood has not improved by the time they reach Dulcington.

The family reunites, the same as it had the day before, and before, and before—Calroy comes rushing out, and Amethar cannot meet his eyes, shrugs off his embrace. There’s a confused look of hurt on Calroy’s face, and Amethar fumes, unable to bear not knowing how true it is.

“War’s coming,” Caramelinda says. “It’s time to stop fooling around.”

Amethar follows them all into the castle, and is grateful when Cumulous takes Calroy out of sight. When they reach their bedchambers, Caramelinda turns on Amethar.

“How could you never tell me?” she says, voice carefully level.

“I didn’t tell anybody,” Amethar says, again. “I… I thought this was one of those things you could never talk about and it would never be a problem.”

Caramelinda scoffs. “You not telling me makes sense. Your sisters probably had a plan when they were alive, and when they were dead, you thought it would go away on its own. Like a child.”

“Caramelinda, I didn’t ask for any of this. You have to know I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t know!” Amethar starts, anger getting to him.

“It doesn’t matter, Amethar! You think _I_ wanted this? You think I wanted to rule Candia next to _you_ instead of—”

“I get it, okay! I’m not my sisters. I’m never going to be my sisters, and maybe I’m just sick and tired of being compared to them my whole life—”

“Then _do better_! You are not allowed to complain to _me_ about being sick and tired, you are not allowed to complain _at all_ when you have thrown our entire country into war—”

“ _The_ _Pontifex_ declared war, not me! _Calroy_ tortured Manta Ray—”

“Calroy?” Caramelinda says, incredulous. “You’re going to blame your right-hand for the mistakes _you_ made?”

“Nevermind,” Amethar groans, and then sits down harshly on the bed, tired. “Look, I don’t want to fight, Caramelinda.”

“It’s a bit too late for that, isn’t it,” Caramelinda spits. “Like I said, war’s coming. You brought the fight to us, which is clearly that’s the only thing you’re good for.”

Amethar flinches, and does not look at her.

“Amethar the Unfallen,” she says, bitterly, and Amethar is sick to death of hearing his title. “Let’s see if Candia can earn the same title.”

The door slams shut behind her. Amethar just tries to breathe, tries not to drown in the anger and exhaustion.

“Why,” he mutters to himself, looking up to the ceiling, to the sky, imploring. “Why is this happening to me?”

“I don’t understand!” he continues, angry. “What do you want me to do?”

There is predictably, no answer.

There’s a sudden knock at the door. Amethar stands quickly, and Calroy’s figure appears at the threshold.

Calroy winces at the sight of him. “Bad time? Good time?”

Amethar doesn’t respond. Can’t, when the sight of his best friend alone makes his vision go red. How much has Calroy taken from him?

“Look,” Calroy says, gentle. “Let’s get out of here. I can’t imagine spending anymore time cramped in you and Caramelinda’s quarters is helping.”

“Shut up.”

Calroy looks taken aback. “What?”

“Shut. Up.” Some part of Amethar wants to take his short sword and run Calroy through right here right now, in the middle of his bedroom. There’s a roaring static in him, a blistering rage he has to struggle to contain. An anger that goes beyond the man standing in front of him, stretches towards whatever sick joke the universe seems to be playing on him, that he has to keep reliving the worst day of his life over and over and over.

Calroy flinches, and Amethar hates that he can’t tell if it’s real, that he can’t tell if the fleeting feeling of regret that shoots across Calroy’s face is the truth. “Sorry, your majesty—”

“How can you even—How long have you been pretending like this, even after what you did to her, how _dare you_ —”

“What are you talking about?” Calroy says, fear beginning to show in his expression.

“You know.”

“I—I don’t—”

“You _killed_ her.”

“Amethar—”

“You killed my _sister_ ,” Amethar roars, palms beginning to spark and crackle as waves of heat cascade outwards.

Calroy stops, then. There’s a brief flash of... _something_ in his eyes, panic, anger, guilt—it vanishes too fast for Amethar to make sense of it. And then the mask is back. “Amethar, please, calm down—”

Almost too fast for Amethar to see, Calroy whips something out from behind his back and lunges towards him. Amethar jerks, reflexes kicking in, and just manages to move out of the way of Calroy’s lunge—the watersteel blade slices the side of his arm, cutting through his clothes like butter. Amethar lets out a loud hiss as the poison bites at the wound and starts its painful journey, and makes a grab for Payment Day, even though he knows in such small quarters, with such little reach, Calroy will always hold the advantage.

Calroy turns and slashes again, and Amethar leaps over the bed almost comically, hearing the thunk of the dagger colliding with the mothball candy of the bedpost where he was standing. They’re on either side of it now, facing down.

Calroy lets out a sharp breath, tilting his head. “It wasn’t meant to be like this, you know,” Calroy says, angry and rueful. “Who told you?”

Amethar lets out a low laugh. “Does it matter? You _killed_ her, Calroy, killed her and had the gall to pretend like you were my f—”

Calroy leaps across the bed towards Amethar, striking in sudden movements that blur in their viciousness. Payment Day is bulky in Amethar’s hands, far too large in their small room, and he feels trapped, stiff under the weight of the blade, the steel in Calroy’s eyes. His left arm is already weak from the poison that eats at it.

Calroy steps forward; Amethar steps back.

He swallows. Calroy will always hold the advantage.

Calroy strikes, Amethar parries. He twists, and Payment Day, lofty in Amethar’s hands, only just stops the knife from gutting him. Without missing a beat, Calroy slashes forward again, and Amethar falls back into the violent rhythm of their sparring. He has fought Cal many times before, but never this Calroy. Never against the seeping bitterness and hatred.

Calroy brings his dagger down in a snarl, and this time Amethar can’t bring Payment Day back in time to stop it from gashing a cut across his thigh. Amethar inhales sharply as the poison does its work. No, Amethar is familiar with only one thing: he’s losing.

Amethar’s leg gives out, and he falls, hits the side of the bed. Calroy’s knife is at his throat in a second. It pauses there, a threat on the soft curve of his neck. Amethar lets his sword drop weakly from his hands.

“How did you find out,” Calroy asks again, catching his breath. “You weren’t meant to—Who told you?”

Amethar doesn’t dignify that with a response. Calroy lets out a breathless laugh. “Because I _know_ you didn’t just figure it out—no, you had the past twenty years to fail to do that. Tell me, did they mention how much I’ve always hated you?

“You were so damned lucky. I mean, fifth in line for the throne, and the crown rests on your head—you were given power on a silver platter! Despite each of your sisters being better and more clever than you. Well, they were a little less lucky, of course, now that you know what I had to do to Rococoa.”

Amethar growls, but the knife digs into his skin, drawing blood. He counts it a small victory at the twinge in Calroy’s face as he averts his eyes.

“You know, I don’t have luck, so I have to work. I have to work a lot. I had to fight tooth and nail for power, crawl brick by fucking brick, all while sitting and watching you do _nothing_ with the throne you were born into.”

“I didn’t ask for this,” Amethar snaps, suddenly. The edge of Calroy’s knife bites into his skin and draws blood. It burns.

“No, and yet here you are. Amethar the Unfallen.” Calroy says, grimly.

The give of the bed is soft against Amethar’s back, a feeling stark against the edge of Calroy’s knife at his throat. The candles flicker, casting his surroundings in far too gentle a light. It’s a warm place to die, in comparison to the parapets, Amethar thinks. Home, he thinks. Cal always knew to hit where it hurt.

“Here,” Calroy says, finally, and then breaks off and swallows, as if finally taking in their surroundings. Amethar hopes his blood is a bitch to clean off the sheets. “To a future you can’t ruin.”

And then Calroy’s wrist moves, and Amethar finds himself choking on the red of his blood as his throat is slit with one sudden movement.

Amethar is ten years old.

“Did you know,” Citrina says, “that in the Ages of Old, the Kings and Queens of Candia would be sent out on great quests?”

Amethar is ten years old, and he is sitting beside his sister as they both attend another court meeting with the King and Queen. He isn’t listening; his parents are droning on about alliances and treaties and landed titles while he kicks at the table leg, bored out of his mind. 

“Back when the great beasts and dragons of myth still roamed free across Calorum, magic was free and plentiful, and Candians would live unending lives,” Citrina continues, conspiratorial. Amethar perks up, eyes going wide. Citrina grins and leans closer, her voice soft, yet as vast and captivating as the ocean.

“For sugar doesn’t spoil,” she continues, “But in exchange, Candians had to face a great many trials to protect their people. The greatest of these trials was between the first Queen of Candia and the Great Gummy Wyrm.

Citrina makes a playful hissing sound, tickling at Amethar’s belly, and he has to stifle the laughter bubbling up in his throat. “Time had come to a stop, you see, because the Great Wyrm had wrapped himself across the world, round and round and round, tied up like a giant knot to stop the sun from rising, the wind from blowing, to freeze all the hunger and growth. So the good Queen went to talk to him, and find out why.

“The Great Gummy Wyrm cried tears as large as the Queen herself, and explained that he was grieving. For he had lost his lover, the other half of his whole. He had lost him to Time, which came to devour everyone. And so in his grief, the Wyrm had decided to stop Time completely.

“‘Stopping Time,’ the Queen argued, ‘will not bring your lover back, Great Wyrm.’ 

“‘But no one else will die,’ the Great Wyrm said. ‘I am doing you a favour.’

“‘No one will grow, either,’ the Queen said. ‘Nothing will change. It is not worth it.’

“The Wyrm weeped. ‘I do not believe you, Queen of Candia, for you are of the people who do not die. You cannot know what this feels like.’

“‘We do not age, but we are not invincible,’ the Queen replied. ‘The cycle of Time claims us all in the end.’”

Amethar giggles at the way Citrina deepens her voice every time the Wyrm speaks. She continues, “And so the debate went on for hours, or would have, if hours still existed. Finally, the Queen made the Wyrm an offer.

“‘And what if I were to give up _my_ Time,’ the Queen said. ‘What if I proved to you that time heals as much as it takes away. What if I offered you _my_ years?’

“The Wyrm stopped crying. ‘You would die for me?’

“‘I would die for my people,’ the Queen responded, ‘if you promise to release us.’

“‘Your people will mourn you,’ the Great Wyrm said. ‘And they will ask me to stop Time again soon enough.’ 

“And so the Great Gummy Wyrm agreed.

“And despite seeing her death on the horizon, the Queen smiled. She gave up her endless life, and in return, the Great Gummy Wyrm let go of the world, and Time began again. The Queen’s people wept, for her death left a great chasm in the Earth. But to the Wyrm’s great disappointment, no Candian came to demand him of anything. Time passed, and her people kept growing and changing, though they never forgot.

“They told her tales and passed her knowledge forward,” Citrina says, and then she winks, “which is how I can tell you her story now.”

“And as for the Wyrm,” Citrina continues, “despite his promise, he bared his fangs and once again tried to wrap himself around the world to stop Time. But in his frustration, he was careless, and sunk his teeth into his tail instead. To this day, he writhes forever in a self-made agony, and that is how we come to know the Ouroboros: the eternal cycle.”

Citrina smiles as she finishes the story, forming a circle symbol with both her hands underneath the table.

“That’s dumb,” Amethar says a moment later, wrinkling his nose. “Lazuli says those myths aren’t real.”

Citrina shakes her head, huffing. “That’s not the point, Amethar. It’s not about what’s possible—it’s about what’s important.”

“And what’s that?”

“Love. Sacrifice. Healing.”

Amethar makes a face. “Is this all just to get me to try and listen to these boring councils?”

Citrina winks, pinches his cheek. “Maybe. I’m still right, though. Pay attention to what the Queen is saying.”

Amethar makes an indignant noise, shoving Citrina’s hand out his face. 

Citrina chuckles, but then her face falls, suddenly serious. “Amethar, listen to me. Sacrifice—” 

And then Amethar is standing, in the now, and Citrina is on the ground, bleeding out as Vegetanian knights stand above her, as Archbishop Belizabeth Brassica brushes her hair from her face and tears the Book of Leaves from her hand.

Citrina looks up, on death’s door, eyes hollow and bruised as candy-apple red drips from the corner of her mouth. 

She stares at Amethar, and her mouth opens and speaks into Amethar’s ears as if she’s standing right beside him— 

“Listen to me, baby brother,” Citrina says, and her voice rings loud and clear despite the blood in her throat. “Love, sacrifice, healing—it comes with time. You have done it before, you must do it again—”

Amethar wakes up to golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola.

He jerks himself upright, hand reaching up to his throat as he gasps wetly. He feels at the smooth skin on his neck with shaky hands; of course, there’s no wound. The memory, the dream—he hasn’t heard Citrina’s voice so vividly in years. The missing of her weighs on him like a physical thing.

His anger has drained away with the previous day, and it’s all Amethar can do to move to the edge of the bed and sit until he stops feeling like he’s choking, until his heartbeat has steadied and he’s back in his surroundings.

Amethar drags himself out into the noon sunlight, and takes in the sharp familiar breeze of the Cola, the loud squawking of honey herons up at the crow’s nest. He brings his palm up to block the sun’s rays. He doesn’t know if this is the universe giving him a second chance, but he might as well try.

“Amethar!” Manta calls, striding over to him. “Finally risen from your beauty sleep, I see.”

“Manta Ray,” Amethar says, conjuring his most serious voice. “I’m going to tell you something crazy, and you have to promise to believe me.”

“…Uh, okay?” Manta Ray says, amused.

“This is serious. You’re gonna think I’ve gone fruit-loopy, but I promise I haven’t.”

Manta Ray’s grin falls. “I—You’re worrying me, Amethar. Are you alright?”

“Promise you’ll believe me.”

Manta Ray huffs. “Oh, of course I’m gonna promise, Amethar! I’ve got your back till the end. Cross my heart.”

Amethar grits his teeth at the new doubt that rises upon hearing Manta Ray say those words. He’s heard them before—from the man who plunges a watersteel knife into his back every night. Amethar shakes his head and concentrates on the man standing in front of him, the man he knows.

Amethar nods. “I’ve lived this day before.”

Manta Ray lifts his eyebrows.

“I’ve woken up today before, at least four times. I know exactly what will happen today because I woke up here yesterday, and—I’m stuck. I don’t know how to get to tomorrow, the _real_ tomorrow, because I just die and, and wake up back here—”

“Woah, Amethar. Slow down. What do you mean you’ve… _lived_ this day before? What do you mean you’ve died?” Manta says, alarm on his face.

“I mean—I keep waking up on this ship, and living out this whole day,” Amethar says, gesturing, but Manta still looks skeptical despite his promise. Something occurs to Amethar. “Like, look, I can tell you that Theo is about to come running up from below deck with Sprinkle right about… now.“

On cue, the door to below deck slams open, and a frantic Theo comes barrelling out as Sprinkle leaps into his face. Amethar puts his arm in front of Manta and steps them both back with the ease of experience. “Afternoon, Theo. Sprinkle not taking well to the dairy?”

“So sorry, my King, Sprinkle doesn’t take well to the dairy—oh. Yes. Um,” Theo says, bowing slightly. “Good afternoon, Amethar. Manta Ray Jack.”

“…Afternoon, Gumbar,” Manta Ray says, bewildered, and then shoots Amethar a scrutinising look and partially covers his mouth to whisper to him, even though Theo is still standing in front of them. “How did you—”

Amethar raises his hands, and drops his voice low to match Manta’s whisper. “Hey, I’m not done yet! Theo is about to freak out about Jet and Ruby being on the bulwarks.”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that, your majesty. I’m about to what?” Theo says, a bit miffed at their discussing right in front of him. “Are you both okay? Did you want me to—oh my god, Jet, Ruby get _off_ the railing, are you girls insane—”

Amethar gives Manta Ray a look that radiates pure _I-told-you-so_.

Manta laughs, thumping Amethar on the back. “Alright, alright, I believe you. Would’ve believed you even without that, y’know. God, Amethar, this is some Candian magic, isn’t it. Feels a bit too complicated for a lowly sailor like me.”

Amethar grabs the back of Theo’s armour just before he gets out of reach. “Oi, Theo, stay here, the girls’ll be fine; I’d know. We need to talk.”

“Oh, your majesty—what is it?”

Amethar tilts his head and thinks a little. “This is important, and you have to promise believe me no matter what, okay? I made Manta Ray do this too. He believes me now.”

“Not that you’ve told me much.”

“I’m _getting_ to it.”

Theo clears his throat. “I promise. Sorry, your majesty, but what is this about?”

“Theo, you know Candian magic better than me. I’m in a… I think I’m in a time loop spell.”

Theo frowns, eyebrows coming together to create a deep crevice in his forehead. “What do you mean?”

“I keep waking up on this ship, living out the whole day, again and again and again.”

The crevice deepens. Theo opens his mouth, looks at Manta, who shrugs, and looks back at Amethar. No words come out.

Amethar continues, “Like, that’s how I knew about Sprinkle. You told me the same yesterday. And the day before. _And_ the day before that. I know this day back to front to back by now.”

“I just—” Theo says, “that sounds like some incredibly powerful magic. I don’t know who could possibly have that power.”

Manta Ray nods. “He has a point. I mean, as long as you’re sure you’re not on some nasty trip—”

“Jack!” Amethar hisses.

“As long as you’re absolutely positive you didn’t have a magic-induced nightmare after weeks of paranoia and being on the run, is what he means,” Theo says, pointed.

Amethar rolls his eyes, and then sticks his hand out to the right to catch the falling honey heron that he knows Cumulous is about to kill. It lands with a sickly thunk in his hand, and he wastes no time in throwing it overboard.

Theo looks up to the crows nest, then back down. There’s a look of awe on Manta Ray’s face. “How did you…”

“I _told_ you,” Amethar says, gesturing with his hands, “I’ve lived through this whole day before. I know how it plays out. We dock in Dulcington at midnight, and reunite at the castle with Caramelinda and Calroy and everything. And then it always ends the same way, with him killing me—”

“Him?” Manta interrupts softly.

Amethar sighs. His hands fall. “Calroy. Yeah, he’s… he’s a traitor, Manta Ray. He’s a liar and a traitor and he’s been plotting against me this whole time. He’s the one who attacked us on Sucrosi Road, planned that assassination at the Grand Tournament—”

“Amethar, hold on—he’s been your best friend for years!” Manta says, incredulous. “He fought _for_ us both times, hell, he’s the only reason I got outta Comida!”

“No, Manta,” Amethar says, weakly. “He’s the reason you were imprisoned there in the first place.”

“Hold on,” Theo says slowly, realisation dawning on his face. “He _was_ the one who called for a healer at the tournament, and let Keradin get close a second time. And the bandits on the Sucrosi Road—there were no foreign steeds, nor ships…”

Theo swears under his breath, looking at Amethar, forlorn. “How did you find out?”

Amethar doesn’t meet Theo’s eyes. “Well, in the first loop, he stabbed me in the back with watersteel and threw me over the castle parapets. Told me how much he hated me, how he’s been plotting against me this whole time. He…” Amethar’s voice breaks. “He told me he killed Rococoa.”

Manta Ray inhales sharply, and Theo’s expression turns into one of horror. Amethar’s hands are shaking, and he’s hit with the realisation that this is the first time he’s ever really told anyone. He swallows. “Remember how we found her? Shot down behind our lines? He was selling weapons to the Ceresians, and she found out, and he… he killed her for it.”

Theo takes a deep breath. “Bulb above. Amethar, I know he was your best friend—I’m so sorry.”

“No,” Amethar says, harsh, hating the sudden pity directed at him. “He was _never_ —he was _lying_.”

Amethar shrugs off Manta’s hand on his shoulder. “Look, I’m not here for the pity party. There’s something going on, and I want to fix it. I want to get Calroy out of my castle and break this stupid spell.”

The worry doesn’t fade from Theo’s face, but he straightens up. “Of course, your majesty. Tell us what you know.”

A routine feeling settles over Amethar—this, he knows. He thinks back through the loops in his head, explaining everything that Calroy has told him and everything that he’s remembered. They believe him, he thinks, relieved. Despite it all, they believe him.

“How many of Calroy’s troops are there? Will we stand a chance?” Theo asks.

“With the King on our side, I don’t see how not!” Manta crows.

Theo looks unsure, but Amethar feels his adrenaline surge at the thought of taking Castle Candy back, of facing Calroy on equal footing. “Our greatest advantage is that they don’t know we’re coming. This is a chance.”

“Alright,” Theo says. “I believe you. I’ll let Cumulous know, and we can have a proper war council.”

As he turns, another dead honey heron falls to the deck of the ship with a sickening thump. Theo sighs. “God, we need a win. We really need a win.”

When he walks off, Manta’s gaze shifts over to the girls. “You gonna tell them?”

Amethar sighs. “Their stealth might be our key to winning. I have to.”

Manta looks at Amethar, scrutinising. “But you don’t want to.”

“…No,” Amethar says. And then, “Bulb above, this whole thing is just another one of my fuck-ups, Jack. That I trusted him, that I believed him—the girls shouldn’t have to deal with _my_ mistakes. No one should, not again.”

“This is _not_ your fault.” Manta says, stern. “He fooled us all.”

“But this whole war—”

“If you want to blame someone, blame me for letting slip your secret, Amethar,” Manta says, and his voice is shaky. “If I hadn’t shouted in front of everyone, if I hadn’t been careless and let that rat bastard overhear me—”

“Jack, save it,” Amethar says. “These are my mistakes, you know that. Let me carry the guilt for the both of us.”

Manta gives him a sad smile. “Oh, Amethar. Fuck whatever Cruller said. I would fight a hundred wars for you before anything could change my mind. You are a good father and a good friend.”

But I am not a good King, Amethar thinks, and does not say, but he returns Manta’s smile and embrace.

——————————

“How are you feeling, my king?” Theo puts a hand on Amethar’s shoulder, jerks him out of his thoughts. The war council is over, but Amethar is still sitting at the table, staring into the distance. “I know we’re all focussed on the plan ahead, but. This can’t be easy for you.”

Amethar sighs, loosens his grip on the wood. He nods unconvincingly. “I’m fine, Theo.”

“All due respect, your majesty, but I’ve known you long enough to know otherwise.”

Amethar looks at Theo, searches his face as if expecting someone else. Without thinking, he asks, “Why do you serve Candia, Theo?”

Theo frowns, surprised, and says, “It’s my duty.”

Amethar nods, not really expecting anything else. Theo is steadfast, constant; he has always served Lazuli, but there are moments where Amethar thinks he reminds him of Rococoa. “Of course.”

“But also, I—” Theo stops, swallows, looks at Amethar resolutely. “I love this family, your majesty. I love Candia. I think it’s worth protecting.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Amethar says, smiling sadly. And then he blurts, “I’ve always known how to be a good soldier, Theo. I don’t know how to be a good king.”

It’s a long time before Theo responds, words careful. “I don’t think they’re as far apart as you think.”

Amethar doesn’t speak, just waits for Theo to continue.

“Being a ruler is its own kind of servitude. On the battlefield, during the war, you fight and you move forward and—

“You mourn later,” Amethar finishes.

Theo nods. “And when you rule, you serve your country and your people and you do what you must despite yourself. For Candia.”

“For Candia,” Amethar repeats. He turns the thought in his head for a bit. He has always known this, he thinks, but it has taken him a long time to properly believe it. He looks up at his knight, smiling. “You know, Theo, you do have your moments.”

Theo looks mildly offended. “I always have, your majesty.”

——————————

Liam’s magic sparks around his hands as he casts his stealth spell on the group.

“There,” Liam says. “That should work.”

Amethar nods, relishing the feeling of being light on his feet for once. He stares at his palms—there is an almost imperceptible flicker of shadow if he looks at them for too long.

They’re still docked at Dulcington, an hour longer than usual, as Manta Ray musters his crew and prepares a smaller boat. Cloaked by the mists and darkness and with cloth wrapped around their oars so as to slip in and out of the water quietly, they’re sailing upriver towards the secret entrance on the east side of the castle. Amethar goes over as Cumulous, Theo and Manta Ray are finishing the final preparations and claps them both on the shoulder.

“See you inside,” he says.

Manta Ray gives him a salute. “We’re counting on you.”

When they sail off, Amethar is left behind with the twins and Liam. He turns, nods at them, and then they make their quiet way through Dulcington, skirting the edges of the forest as they approach Castle Candy from the side. The night is still, the moon hanging in suspense. They are lucky; the mist covers much of their approach.

The castle looks the same as it always is, but approaching it from this angle sends Amethar’s heart racing. They have the element of surprise, not to mention magic, but he has never fought a siege on his own castle’s grounds.

When they reach the farthest point before the forest turns into fields, they sprint up to the side of the keep, hugging the walls. According to Jet and Ruby, there’s a small part of the outer walls that’s easy to scale and a decent distance from any major lookouts.

Jet nods; they’re here. Ruby uses her magic to lift the rope and tie it tight to a brick that juts out at the top of the wall, and then they’re off, scaling the wall with ease. Amethar insists on going last.

This, Amethar can focus on. The feel of the rough candy brick under his hands and the strain in his muscles. He’s not a stealthy man by any stretch, but with Liam’s magic and the twins’ guidance, he knows what to do. He knows the mission ahead and he knows how to follow orders.

It’s everything else he’s scared of.

When Ruby reaches the top of the wall, she looks down in a panic, making a fist with her hand and signalling everyone to stop climbing. All of them hold their breaths as the footsteps of a guard slowly approaches. The flicker of his torch sends soft shadows scattering around them, the soft orange of the flame lighting up their panicked faces.

The footsteps fade. Amethar lets up a sigh, and at Ruby’s signal, they continue their way over, crouching close to the ground. Again, they tie the rope and begin to descend.

Just as Liam lowers himself on the rope, Amethar freezes. A torchlight approaches from the distance—the guard’s coming back. Amethar signals at the kids to go; it’s far too late for Amethar to get over without being seen.

Amethar takes a deep breath, and when the soldier rounds the corner he lunges, grabbing the soldier in a chokehold and covering his mouth to stop him from screaming. His other hand goes to the torch, but too late—the guard falls limp and the torch falls, rattling loud against the ground and going out.

He freezes, waiting for the inevitable ringing of alarms.

The night is quiet.

Letting out a breath, Amethar slings the unconscious body of the soldier over his shoulder, being careful not to rustle the armour, and finally makes his way down the wall.

Jet and Ruby pounce on him when he reaches the bottom, hugging him tight with relief. Amethar returns it, and then hides the soldier behind an old bush.

The courtyard they’ve landed in is a small one, rarely guarded, just as Jet and Ruby had planned. Ruby casts _Invisibility_ on him, and Amethar ties cloth around his boots to muffle the sound. He nods at them, ready to part ways.

“Wait,” Jet says, right before he turns, and then she runs up to Amethar, Ruby following close behind, hugging him as tightly as they can. Liam stands awkwardly to the side, but Amethar chuckles and pulls him into the hug. No one knows the castle as well as the girls do, he knows, as their years of practice sneaking in and out, but he doesn’t think he will ever not be anxious having to leave them.

“I’m gonna kill him for you, Pops,” Jet says viciously into his chest.

Amethar laughs, a little wet. “Like hell you are. You’re going to let Theo and Manta in through the secret passage and _not be seen._ ”

“And then we’ll kill him,” Ruby says.

Jet sniffles. “Get mom out safe, okay?”

“Okay,” Amethar says, and he presses a kiss to the top of their heads and never wants to let go. “Okay.”

——————————

Amethar runs forward, sticking to the shadows as he goes straight for their bedchambers. If he’s right, Caramelinda should still be sleeping. The entrances to the castle itself remain open, and his invisibility helps him sneak by the guards unnoticed.

He turns the corner and curses silently; there are Muffinfield soldiers guarding their room. If he attacks, his invisibility will be broken, Ruby had told him that much.

He grits his teeth, and takes the risk.

Amethar charges, running straight into them. His shoulder slams into the helmet of one of them, knocking him out immediately, and he uses their disorientation to his advantage, making quick work of the second guard before they can make sense of what their eyes are seeing. He winces at the loud ringing every time armour is jostled, but they fall quickly. Amethar wipes at his brow, and opens the door.

A terrific bang sounds, followed by a high-pitched squealing like a kettle being boiled, and Amethar is sucked forward as a hundred twisting blue vines wrap around him. Pain seizes at his limbs, and he lets out a cry. He can’t breathe.

“Amethar!?” Caramelinda’s voice is tainted with fear and shock. The vines loosen suddenly as she steps out from behind her wardrobe. “Amethar, what in the world—how are you here?”

Amethar groans, eyes adjusting to the darkness of their room as reality catches up to him—of course Caramelinda was awakened by the commotion, of course she’d set a trap for intruders—she runs to him, still in her night-dress and silk bonnet, and helps lift him out of the vines.

“You’re _alive_.” Her breath stops short. “Where are the girls? What were you doing!”

Amethar shushes her, catching his breath. “The girls are safe and okay. We need to get out of here.”

“What? The castle is the safest place for miles.”

“No! No, it’s not.” Amethar reaches out, grabs her hand. “Calroy is a traitor.”

The colour drains from Caramelinda’s face. “What do you—Amethar, he’s been by our side for years—”

“Cara, listen to me. We don’t have a lot of time. We need to go.” The alarm that had gone off when Amethar had fallen into the trap would’ve no doubt alerted the rest of the Muffinfield guards by now. Caramelinda was too clever for her own good.

Caramelinda’s face hardens. “I’m not leaving Castle Candy while we’re at war, Amethar. I’m not going to run away from my problems.”

“That’s not—” Amethar makes a frustrated noise. “He’ll _kill_ you, Cara!”

“He…” Caramelinda falters at Amethar’s certainty. “He’s your best friend.”

Amethar sighs. “I don’t have time to get into it. We need to get out. Just trust me.”

“How can I trust you—this is absurd, Amethar!” Caramelinda says, voice rising in anger. “We can’t abandon the castle.”

“We’ve already lost it,” Amethar says. He can hear the approach of footsteps from around the corridor and curses, turning to face the door. “We don’t have time for this. Please, Caramelinda. I’ll explain once we get away from these soldiers. Theo and Manta Ray are meeting us at the entrance on the East side of the castle; that’s where the girls are.”

There’s a brief moment where Caramelinda stares at him, torn, and then she nods. Amethar breathes a sigh of relief.

“Soldiers are coming,” Amethar says, kicking into action. “You need to tell them you sprung the trap by accident, okay?”

There’s uncertainty on her face, but she nods again, and closes the door behind them as Amethar drags her guard’s unconscious bodies inside.

There’s a pounding at the door. “Queen Caramelinda? We heard a loud noise—are you okay?”

Caramelinda looks at Amethar hard and signs at him to stay.

She settles herself into her queenly stance and approaches the door. It swings open. “Evening,” she greets. “I’m sorry, I accidentally triggered one of my failsafes—it was a mistake. You know how flimsy magic can be.”

She lies with a put-upon embarrassment and regret, and Amethar is impressed. The soldier is not entirely convinced, pushing in with his torch to try and see further into her room. “Your majesty—are you sure there’s nothing wrong? Where’s your private guard?”

Caramelinda falters, eyes darting to Amethar briefly. He freezes. “I dismissed them earlier tonight. We’re deep in the castle, there’s not much safer I can get. I just wanted a moment alone.”

The guard hesitates.

“I’m sorry for the disturbance, but everything’s fine. You may go.”

A pause, and then, “Of course, your majesty.”

Amethar heaves a sigh of relief at the sound of retreating footsteps. Caramelinda closes the door, and looks over to him. He gives her a thumbs-up, and she relaxes.

“Let’s go,” he says, and then they run out of the room, making their cautious way towards the other side of the castle. Luck must be on their side, because after that first encounter, they don’t come across any other soldiers. At some point, Amethar becomes aware that he’s holding her hand as they run, leading her across the castle.

When they reach the final turn, Amethar notices Jet and Ruby’s silhouettes. Caramelinda gasps at the sight of her daughters.

“Girls,” Caramelinda cries, as she runs forward and pulls the twins into a crushing hug. The secret entrance is a steep tunnel climb from the rocky crags at the side of the castle; Cumulous, Theo, and Manta Ray’s crew are slowly filing their way into the courtyard.

“You’re safe, you’re alright,” she weeps.

“We heard a noise coming from your direction, is everything okay?” Ruby says, anxious.

“Yes,” Caramelinda says, looking up to Amethar with worry, “but not for long. Calroy’s men heard us—they’re on alert.”

“The last of us are in!” Manta Ray calls, soft, and puts the tunnel cover and covering bushes back.

Amethar nods. The second part of their plan was to go with Theo to muster the Knights Gumbar, but they might not have the time.

There’s a shout from above.

Amethar swears. They’ve been spotted. He shouts a warning, shoves everyone back against the walls as he hears the whistling of arrows. The thudding of footsteps and sound of armour is close behind.

Amethar calls to his daughter. “Ruby, can you—?”

She starts the incantation before he even finishes his sentence, and a moment later the courtyard is filled with a thick pink fog. There’s shouts of alarm from the guards, and then they’re out of sight, the arrows ceasing to a halt.

“Go!” Amethar orders, gesturing towards the entrance he and Caramelinda came in. “It’ll be a while before they can muster any substantial troops, take out as many people as you can!”

He turns to Caramelinda. “Go back through the secret entrance; we’ll come and get you when it’s safe.”

She opens her mouth to protest, looking back at the girls. “I can help. You can’t expect our daughters to _fight_ —

“We’ve changed, Mom,” Ruby says. “You’ll only slow us down.”

“Yeah, we’re war guys now,” Liam adds on.

She looks between all of them, disbelieving. “I am _not_ leaving you children. I just got you all back.“

“We’re not children anymore,” Jet says, and hugs her tight. “I’m sorry, mom. Go.”

She clings to Jet, tightly. “Amethar, promise me you’ll keep them safe,” she says.

Amethar thinks, you can never promise that. Not in war. He’d learnt that twenty years ago, and he knows it now. Caramelinda looks at him with pleading eyes, and Amethar says, “I promise.”

Finally, she nods and turns, running to the grate.

Amethar hustles the rest of the group into the main building, through the corridors and towards the heart of the castle. Their forces are few, but the element of surprise affords them an advantage, and they cut through the scattered Muffinfield troops they come across with ease. If they can secure the castle, they’ll have an advantage against the Ceresian troops in the fields.

Amethar and Theo lead the charge, running ahead of all the chaos, as Cumulous takes the advantage of height and movement, leaping off the walls and chandeliers and striking before he is even seen.

There’s a familiar figure at the top of the stairs.

“Amethar!?” Calroy shouts, the perfect picture of confused relief. Amethar freezes, looks past him—he’s backed up by a dozen Muffinfield soldiers.

“You’re alive! What in the world’s going on? There’s fighting in the castle, it isn’t safe. Where’s Caramelinda?”

Rage spikes in Amethar. “Get out of the way, Calroy.”

“What are you doing, Amethar?” And, damn him, he has the nerve to sound scared. Even now Amethar falters.

They can’t face him here, Amethar knows. They don’t have the Knights of Gumbar to back them up, and Calroy’s chosen the perfect spot—the curve of Castle Candy’s spiral stairs are built so that intruding forces would fight at a disadvantage, climbing the stairs with their weapons against the wall. Calroy’s positioned himself at the top of one of those now, the Knight’s Quarters just beyond.

“Hold back,” Theo says, voicing Amethar’s concerns. “Steady, Amethar, we’ll find somewhere else to hold him off.”

Instead of responding, Amethar looks at the figure above him and shouts, “Take off the mask, Calroy. You’re not fooling anyone anymore.”

Calroy’s face widens in shock, and then it hardens, shoulders falling back as the friendly persona drops from his stance. “Fine.”

And then he points forward, and his forces start barrelling past him down the stairs. Amethar swears—Manta Ray and his crew charge forward, meeting them steel on steel.

“Here!” Jet shouts, frantic as she points to a nearby door. “We can cut through the kitchen to get to the Knight’s Quarters!”

Amethar looks at the group with worry; Cruller’s men are far too close.

“We’ll hold them off,” Manta Ray cries, and looks at Amethar with a stern look. “Go get the Knights of Gumbar.”

Amethar nods and then starts running, shouting behind him. “We’ll be back for you!”

“Damn right you will!” Manta shouts back, and then joins the throng.

Amethar clenches his fist, and knows in his heart that Manta Ray’s crew is unlikely to hold on for long under Muffinfield troops. His crew are sailors, not soldiers, none of them have the training—He shakes the thoughts off.

You fight, you move forward, and you mourn later.

They clamber up the steps, dusty with misuse, and emerge from the passage straight in the depths of the knight’s quarters.

“We’ll take this side, rouse anyone we can find.” Jet says. “You take the other—find Toby.”

Ruby lights a lantern, and she, Liam, and Jet sprint off. Amethar, Cumulous, and Theo head to the front, heading for Toby’s quarters.

The door is ajar. Theo stops, looks at Amethar in worry. Amethar puts his palm on the wood and swings it further open.

The first thing he notices is the mess.

The bed is undone, the wardrobe knocked aside, their contents spilling across the floor. The few precious possessions the knight has have been cracked underfoot, a portrait hanging above his bed of his family slashed through.

And then—

Sir Toby’s body lies in the corner of the room, broken and lifeless.

They’ve messed up.

Liam runs in, panicked. “We can’t find the rest of the knights, Amethar—oh, god.”

He brings a hand to his mouth at the sight of Toby’s body.

A shouting comes from outside the window, and Amethar becomes aware of the marching of even more footsteps.

Cumulous runs to the window, and his eyes widen with horror. “Vegetanian and Ceresian reinforcements.”

“Vegetanian?” Amethar says, stunned.

Theo joins him. “It’s Sir Keradin,” he says, sounding defeated.

Amethar blood turns to ice, and he joins them at the window. Theo is right; sixty or more so soldiers are marching up the fields from the forest, terrifyingly close to the gate. “No, no, no.”

“Did you say Keradin?” Liam says, darkly, shoving his way forward.

“We need to keep that main gate closed and keep them out of the castle. We don’t stand a chance if they get in,” Amethar says.

“There’s no time, Amethar,” Theo says. “The main gate’s leagues away.”

“We don’t have a choice,” Amethar says, and then he bolts out of the room and towards the main gate. It’s only through the sound of their footsteps that he knows the rest of the party is following him.

“Pops!” Jet shouts, as she and Ruby catch up to them. “What’s going on, we couldn’t find any of the Knights, they’ve all been scattered or killed—”

“We go to the main gate, make sure no one opens it to let the Vegetanian troops in. If we can hold it, we have a chance against Calroy’s troops. We know this castle better than any soldier from Muffinfield.”

Better than any soldier other than Cal, Amethar thinks, troubled. But Jet voices an assent behind him. “We know a shortcut—we’ll meet you there.”

Muffinfield troops up ahead. Amethar shoulders his way through, barely stopping to fight. He just keeps driving his legs forward, hacking his enemies down as fast as he can like overgrown wheat. Doesn’t flinch as the effort begins to drain him, as he continues to take wounds. He rages, and all of the pain fades to the same burning he feels on his skin.

Amethar breaks out the front door, just a stretch away from the keep—

Calroy stands in front of the main gate.

Amethar comes to a halt—there is cheesy blood on Calroy’s rapier.

“Amethar,” he says again, voice low and ragged. “What are you doing?”

“I’m taking back this castle,” he says, even though even as he says it he knows they’ll need a miracle to succeed.

“Taking it back from _who_?” Calroy says, laughing incredulously. “Me? See, I was under the impression that this castle was under Caramelinda’s control, until I couped. And I hadn’t done that yet, so. Who told you?”

Amethar doesn’t respond.

“Fine. You can die knowing you were right.”

Calroy barks an order. His soldiers begin to open the gate, and Amethar runs forward, frantic to stop then—and then he runs no longer as charging Vegetanian reinforcements force their way into the yard, Sir Keradin Deeproot at the head.

“No,” Amethar yells. He’s too late. They’re outnumbered, now, and all but lost.

There’s a sharp cry from behind him, as Liam sprints forward, darkness nipping at his feet. Amethar reaches out, tries to hold him back from a suicidal situation, but it’s too late. He loses him in the throng of soldiers; his only chance now is finding Keradin before Liam does.

His body remembers war better than he does. Amethar moves with a ruthlessness he has not felt in a long time. The clanging of steel, the shouts of pain and terror, the blood that soaks his cape. None of this is new.

He can feel Theo’s presence behind him, ever-steady, can see Cumulous flittering in and out from the corner of his eye, fast as lightning. His heart rabbits in his throat—he cannot see Jet and Ruby. Manta Ray and his soldiers have all but disappeared.

Amethar is breathing heavy, and finally he spots the brilliant white cape of Sir Keradin Deeproot amongst the chaos. He runs forward—

And is too late. Keradin’s mace lifts into the air, so dark it looks black under the torchlight, and then it crashes into the figure of Liam Wilhelmina, who crumples.

Amethar lets out a wordless cry, runs forward and before he can even think, plunges Payment Day right through Keradin’s chest. It tears through the man’s armour like a knife through butter. The man makes a choking noise, and then falls.

Grief overcomes Amethar as he reaches down towards the limp figure of a small boy. A _boy_. Amethar wipes his tears, holds the body tight to him, and drags himself away from the combat, resting Liam against the wall. His peppermint overalls are stained a deep, deep red.

There’s a movement out of the corner of his eye, and he spots the retreating figure of Calroy as he runs up the steps, limping. Amethar growls, his body crackling as a new rage overtakes his bones, and gives chase.

Calroy spots him, and puts on more speed, but Amethar doesn’t give up. He follows him into the same courtyard they came in through, towers barricading them in, the hidden exit just a few steps away. Calroy finally turns, alone, and his attention flickers down to the grate and back.

They face each other across the courtyard.

“Jet and Ruby are dead, you know,” Calroy says, and his voice shakes.

Amethar feels the floor drop beneath him. “You’re lying,” he says, but he can’t stop the grief from showing on his face. He shouldn’t have brought them here, he shouldn’t have let them fight—his fault, his fault, _his fault—_

“You’re lying,” Amethar roars, again. “What did you do to them?”

“Nothing. _You_ brought them here. They shouldn’t have been—” Calroy cuts himself off. It takes a second for him to speak again, voice level. “You forced my hand, Amethar. I don’t know how you found out, but the castle was safe until you returned. Until I could _make sure_ you were dead.”

Calroy’s face turns dark. “I guess this is my chance.”

And then he lunges, and Amethar brings Payment Day up to meet Calroy’s blows, heavy and wicked fast, like holding back a fusillade instead of just one person. But they’re both weaker than usual from combat, and Amethar doesn’t buckle under the onslaught, slicing skin whenever Calroy is leaves an opening in his stance.

Another three hits, five, ten, where all he can do is parry and take blows—and then a break, and Amethar finds his footing one more time, shoving forward and pushing his weight behind the hilt of his sword as he tries to throw Calroy to the ground. Calroy falls, stumbling back, and Amethar brings his sword down. Calroy rolls away just in time to avoid a fatal blow, and the blade slices past his shoulder instead, wrenching a cry from his throat. Amethar curses, trying to rip the sword out of where it’s embedded as fast as he can, but Calroy stands, leaning heavily, and strikes again. Amethar ducks behind his sword as Calroy’s foil clangs against it unevenly, thrown off-balance by his injury. 

Calroy growls, and then does something Amethar doesn’t expect—he retreats. Amethar frowns, trying to follow. And then he realises they are no longer alone.

Archers, lining the towers around them.

Calroy was stalling for time.

“Enough, Amethar. It’s over,” Calroy says, holding his shoulder and coughing violently. And then he grins, teeth bloody. “Strange. I feel as if I’ve done this before.”

Amethar snarls, forcing his legs to move as he makes a last-ditch attempt to rush at Calroy.

Calroy signals—and then comes the sound of a dozen bows firing.

Amethar knows even as he runs that he can dodge and block a few of the missiles, but not this many—an arrow hits him in the leg, stopping his charge. Another in his shoulder, and he’s brought to his knees. Shot down and riddled with arrows—A cold, cold feeling of failure spreads through him more sharply than the pain.

It’s over.

The reset, Amethar thinks, desperate. Please, please, please reset. The vision of Liam’s body on the ground, of Jet and Ruby’s somewhere in this castle, makes him feel sick.

Calroy watches him fall, an indecipherable look on his face.

A final arrow digs itself into the back of Amethar’s neck, and the world goes black.

Amethar wakes up.

He gasps with relief, tears falling from his cheeks in a moment, as he lies down and waits for his vision to clear. Golden wood planks above him, and beyond the sound of his own shaky breathing is the quiet lapping of the Cola River against the side of the ship.

The ghost of choking and blood is still in his mouth. He closes his eyes—the vision of Liam’s body feels imprinted on the back of it, caught between Calroy’s echoing words that Jet and Ruby were gone.

He’d failed, and watched as his family died again.

Creaking from overhead—Jet and Ruby. Amethar stumbles out of bed, runs up the stairs until he hits the top of the deck.

He finds them up on the railing at the bow of the ship, their laughter echoing.

“Girls,” he shouts, caught between relief and anger and worry, “Get down from there, it’s not safe—”

“Pops?” Jet says, confused, and then Amethar pulls her and Ruby into a crushing hug, his daughters warm and small and so very alive in his arms. It’s all he can do the hold his tears back.

“You’re okay,” Amethar says. “Oh, Bulb above, you’re both okay.”

“I know what I’m doing, Pops!” Ruby says, a little frustrated. “I wasn’t going to fall!”

“Just, be careful, okay? I can’t—” Amethar cuts himself off.

“Pops?” Jet says, concerned.

“I can’t lose you two,” Amethar says.

Ruby hugs him back. “You won’t.”

I almost did, Amethar thinks, clutching them even tighter. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course you don’t go into a battle without all the facts, you don’t go unprepared, you don’t go into a fight without using every single advantage you have.

And this time loop, it’s Amethar’s biggest advantage. He didn’t know, but he could’ve. He could map every movement in Castle Candy if he wanted to. He didn’t, he was too hasty, and he’d lost them.

——————————

When he reaches the castle this time, he ignores Calroy entirely. He can barely hold his smile for more than a few moments; he doesn’t know how Calroy held his for years upon years, reassuring Amethar out of insecurities he believed—he pushes the painful thoughts away. Says his lines as mechanically as he can, moving through the conversation like he’s watching it rather than living in it.

Caramelinda is gesturing for him to follow her inside. She’s fuming, eyes sparking with an anger that aches in loss. Amethar swallows, turns away even as she calls him; he knows what he needs to do, and he doesn’t have a lot of time. He eyes Calroy walking away with Cumulous.

“Amethar,” Caramelinda calls even as Amethar turns away. “We need to talk.”

Amethar doesn’t meet her eyes. “I’m sorry, Cara—if you knew, you’d understand.”

And then he pushes past the group and into the castle.

It’s so quiet. Free from the bloodshed of the previous night.

Cruller’s men patrol the halls, and Amethar walks back and forth, counting the minutes before they go by at every major entrance. They eye him strangely as they pass, but Amethar assumes they have orders from Calroy not to attack just yet. He rolls his eyes; Calroy _would_ keep him all to himself.

He runs the whole length of the castle, palm against the wall as he speed-walks through the corridors. He finds out exactly where Calroy’s placed the Cruller guards, stands at the edge of the parapets to spy the tents of the Keradin’s troops, lined just at the edge of the forest tree-line. He even finds the bonfire along the west wall that he assumes they’re using to signal the Ceresian and Vegetanians.

When he reaches the chambers of the Knights of Gumbar, it’s just in time to see a dozen of Cruller’s men dragging Sir Toby’s body across his room.

“King Amethar—” One of them says, eyes widening.

Amethar doesn’t let him finish. He roars, running and shouldering the soldier out of the way. Shouting and chaos erupts around him. He leans down towards the body—Toby’s already gone.

Amethar closes Toby’s eyes, and then feels a steel sword scrape across his shoulder. He grunts, turns—and an arrow digs right under his ribs. He coughs blood.

More shouting. 

“Lord Cruller said he was dealing with the King—”

“Well, clearly he failed!”

Amethar pulls Payment Day out with no small effort, and skewers the Muffinfield soldier directly in front of him. He turns just in time to parry a spear thrust, then twists the blade and cuts the offending soldier in half. Another arrow in his back, and another Muffinfield soldier downed as Amethar retaliates.

By the time he’s finished, ten more bodies have joined Toby’s on the floor.

There’s the pounding of footsteps outside, and Amethar turns to see Calroy at the doorway. The silhouettes of Muffinfield soldiers stand behind him.

“Amethar?” Calroy says, shock on his face. His eyes widen, and Amethar doesn’t know if it’s genuine or not, as everything he knows about his best friend continues to be thrown to the wind. 

“What happened here?” Calroy’s eyes drop to the arrows in his shoulder and back, anger cutting across his face as he notices the fletching emblazoned with the Muffinfield colours. “My men—they attacked you?”

“Yeah, I know you wanted to deal with me yourself, but you know,” Amethar says, and then gestures to Toby’s body. “I saw them kill Sir Toby on your orders.”

“My orders—” Calroy steps closer, but wisely not in Amethar’s striking distance. “Amethar, you can’t seriously believe I wanted this.”

He lets out a hollow laugh. “You think I wanted to believe it either?”

Calroy’s face hardens. “What are you talking about.”

“I know everything. The betrayal, the conspiring, the cathedral. Rococoa.” Amethar’s voice breaks.

Calroy steps back at that, hand moving behind his back. “How…”

“Going to kill me?” Amethar says, and raises his sword weakly. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance.

But the feeling when Calroy lunges forward and buries the hilt of the water-steel into his chest doesn’t change. It hurts—

Amethar wakes up.

He clutches at his chest. The pain vanishes. Deep breath in. Out.

He needs more information. Keradin’s troops, allying with Ceresia—it doesn’t make sense. Why would Calroy betray him to become King of a country besieged on all sides? They’re still at _war_. Amethar knows Calroy’s smart, that he plays battlefields like chess; years of fighting beside him in the Ravening War taught him that much.

So what’s the gameplan? Amethar doesn’t know if Calroy’s blinded by his own hatred for Amethar, enough to risk all this. To throw away being right-hand to a King who trusted him implicitly—

Amethar doesn’t know Calroy at all, apparently.

He sighs. Takes a deep breath. He’s going to need help on this loop.

——————————

Amethar explains.

Theo takes a deep breath. “Bulb above. Amethar, I know he was your best friend—I’m so sorry.”

Amethar doesn’t meet Theo’s eyes. “Look, I’m not here for the pity party. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to tell you guys.” Theo sends him a disbelieving look, but keeps his mouth shut.

“I just need your help with a little infiltration.”

“Well, of course, we have to do something, right? Take back the castle? I can rally up my men and—” Manta starts, but Amethar cuts him off.

“No,” Amethar says, quickly. “No, Manta, we can’t—we’ve tried before. We can’t _yet_. We need to know more.”

“Last time went badly, didn’t it,” Theo says, still that look of concern on his fact as he sees right through his king, and Amethar feels something knot in his stomach.

“Yes. Look, Theo, it’s fine, it reset. You’re all back.” Amethar says. Theo, damn him, doesn’t take the concerned look off his face, though he doesn’t do anything else but nod.

“But most importantly,” Amethar continues, “Theo, you know how to read.”

——————————

When he reaches the castle, Caramelinda runs out, followed by Calroy.

Amethar settles his face into a smile, his own speech rehearsed like a script, “Now, those are some pants!”

And then Calroy pulls him into an embrace, and Amethar’s hands, out of view from Calroy, reaches to his belt and undoes the keyring with one deft movement.

Cal had taught him that, ironically—you don’t become best friends with someone like Cal for twenty-five years and not pick up a few pickpocketing skills. Theo watches him out of the corner of his eye, nodding, and Amethar has to stifle a laugh at the dirty look he flashes at Calroy’s back.

Calroy steps back, and Amethar moves the keys under his cloak, well out of sight.

“Well, I’ve had to upgrade in the absence of Candia’s greatest fighter!” Calroy laughs, and his voice breaks.

Amethar swallows and turns.

Theo looks comically uncomfortable with disobeying Caramelinda’s orders, caught between Amethar and his duty. Amethar sighs in fond exasperation and whispers to him, “Take the girls to bed, Theo—I’ll meet you there.”

And then he heads for the East Wing, ignoring Caramelinda’s angry calls, and makes for where he knows Calroy’s quarters are. He bites the inside of his mouth and tells himself Caramelinda won’t remember anything tomorrow anyway. The hallways are quiet, and the trip to Calroy’s room is familiar. Not far from his own King’s quarters, and the thought of it, once comforting, makes his stomach turn.

When he makes the last turn, Cruller’s men stand guard at the door. Amethar swears under his breath; he’d forgotten it’d probably be guarded. Even less time, then. He gives them a curt nod as he appears to walk past. Two beats, and then Amethar strikes, slamming the first guard into the wall and pulls the spear from the second’s hand before they can react. It’s loud. The commotion will bring people running, if not his own absence—but it’s too late. He slams the butt of the soldier’s own spear into their temple, elbows the other soldier from where they try to get up from the ground. Wraps his hand around the soldier’s throat until they go limp.

Amethar pulls out the keys he’d stolen from Calroy and makes quick work of it. He drags the bodies in, locks the door again behind him.

It’s dark. Amethar lights a candle and stumbles to the table, which is clean and unrevealing. The bed looks messy; Calroy really had stumbled out of sleep straight to the gates to meet them. He’s seen these quarters many times, but under the moonlight and a held breath, it looms threateningly.

Amethar tries to use the same set of keys to unlock the table, but they clunk awkward—of course Calroy would keep the keys to his stupid secret spy drawer somewhere else. He swears, and then leans down, using his bare hands to pry open the drawer instead. Amethar winces at the noise, and then finally looks—tons of documents and letters. He recognises the grainy material of letters from Ceresia, the smell of Vegetanian ink and the scrolls of church paper. There’s even ones with the seal of Uvano, and Amethar can guess they’re not from the late Gustavo.

He sighs, then gets digging, not really knowing what he’s looking for. He wasn’t expecting a giant calligraphy sign pointing to a “Step-By-Step Evil Guide To Betraying Your Best Friend”, but he thinks there has to be something, anything. A sign, something he can hold, physical in his hand to prove Calroy’s treachery to himself rather than anything. Something that can compete against twenty-five years, something that makes sense and doesn’t feel like his best friends has just been _replaced_ —

There’s a knock at the door.

“My King?” comes Theo’s frantic whisper. Amethar snaps out of his thoughts and lets Theo in quickly, locking the door behind him.

“Here,” he whispers, lighting a candle. “Letters. Can you read them?”

Theo nods and peers at the ink under the flame. “This one’s from Ceresia—Ciabatta.” His eyes scan the words quickly, his expression growing with worry at every new letter. “You were right.”

“Well?” Amethar says.

“Ciabatta’s lent Calroy his troops. There’s a reference here to a long-time relationship; they’ve been working together since the war. _‘_ Pass my regards to the sweet Lady Donetta too _’_ … Bulb above, Amethar, this runs deep—”

Amethar bristles, but nods. His hands clench against the table, even as the details come back to him. It makes sense. He doesn’t know much about politics, but he does remember Donetta’s Ceresian upbringing, especially in the few times he had visited Muffinfield on Calroy’s request. It’s no surprise that she found Calroy his connections.

“Oh, shit.” Theo says, as he continues reading. “Ceresia plans to follow the Pontifex’s rule and wage war on Candia.”

“Then why is he working with them?” Amethar hisses.

Theo’s eyes widen as he keeps reading. “Because without the royal family, Ciabatta’s offering Calroy a position as governor of the new province of Ceresia that Candia will become.”

Amethar’s grip tightens on the table. Crawl brick by brick for power indeed.

“These are from Vegetania, I think,” Amethar says, gesturing to other letters on the table.

Theo nods. “That’s the seal of the Bulbian church. It’s… from Belizabeth. Sending forth Keradin’s troops, disguised as crusaders but heading straight to the castle. It’s a response to one of Calroy’s letters—If he’s willing to baptise himself in the name of the Bulb, she’ll offer him amnesty and safety from the crusades. Scumbag.”

Amethar agrees. He hands Theo another letter. “What about this one? Has the seal for Uvano on it.”

A moment later, Theo says, “Missives from Plumbeline. She has no fondness for Belizabeth or Ciabatta, and—mentions the desire for a new Concord.” Theo looks up. “One she can rule, presumably.”

Amethar nods. “Shit,” he says, sitting down in the desk chair. “Shit. This is so…”

“Complicated?” Theo sighs. “This has been in the works for a long time, it seems. Things have been put in motion that were apparently years in the making.”

“I had no idea,” Amethar says, broken. “I had no clue any of this was happening—”

“None of us did, your majesty,” Theo says, softly. “You can’t blame yourself.”

“We were best friends.”

Theo doesn’t have a response for that, except to put his hand on Amethar’s shoulder. The candlelight flickers.

Amethar rises from the desk, frustrated, and walks carefully around the edges of the room, tapping gently on the firm wood of the ground with the soles of his shoes—Sapphria had taught him this trick.

“Your majesty?” Theo asks, confused.

Amethar shushes him. A dozen steps later, and—there. A hollow thunk. He lifts the edge of the carpet, finds a nick in the way the peppermint wood has been fitted together. He pries it open with a little difficulty, his thick fingers struggling against the fine engravings in the wood, but the floorboard comes out with a satisfying pop. Theo walks over, muttering swear words under his breath at what Amethar finds.

Inside the compartment are three vials and a letter—Ceresian again, but with a different script from Ciabatta’s. Amethar isn’t well-versed in espionage, not really savvy enough for that kind of delicacy, but this, he’s good at. Filing information in his head, remembering details—not being able to read or write means his memory has to be as sharp as the sword he wields.

Suddenly, there’s the sound of approaching footsteps outside the door. Amethar turns to look at Theo, eyes blown wide. Soldiers, a lot of them. They’re out of time.

“I’ll hold them off,” Theo says. Amethar feels his gut drop, holding Theo’s arm.

“There’s too many of them, Theo—”

Theo smiles sadly, shaking his head. “The loops reset, right? Just get what you need done, your majesty. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And then he runs forward, stepping out the door and closing it shut behind him. There’s sounds of exclamations, followed by the ringing noise of combat, steel clashing on steel, and Amethar drags his attention away from Theo—stupid, noble Theo—and back to what he’s holding.

The first vial is clear, but he pops the cork and sniffs—ricein. He recognises this one; the same kind that Calroy had poisoned his tea with. Fast-working, Calroy had said, but slowed down due to his size. The second vial is a violent purple, makes Amethar nauseous just to look at it, and he recognises it as wolfsbanh; a fairy-tale poison, one he’d thought only existed in myths. The third he recognises from the war; an old toxin Fructerans would coat their weapons in to make them poisonous and deadly with a single scratch. There’s a nausea rising in Amethar’s gut that has nothing to do with the poison, and everything to do with how many ways Calroy had prepared to kill him. Back-up plan after back-up plan. He doesn’t know what name to give the grief that eats at his bones.

There’s a heavy silence as the combat from outside stops abruptly. Amethar can’t breathe. He shoves his feelings back down—he knows how the battlefield works. You fight now, mourn later.

The door is rammed in, and Amethar watches as Calroy bursts through, sticky blood on his shirt, as the expressions on his face go from shock to confusion to anger .

His brows furrow. “Amethar, what are you—”

“Is Theo...” Amethar can’t bring himself to finish the question.

Calroy swallows, tight, eyes drifting towards his ransacked desk. His eyes harden. “He attacked us. What are you _doing_ , Amethar?”

Amethar watches Calroy shift, hand hidden from his behind his back, and grimaces. “No need for the knife. Promise I won’t fight back.”

Calroy’s eyes widen, mouth opening in protest, but barely a sound comes out. Amethar feels heavy with exhaustion, sinking in his chest like an anchor.

“It took me days to truly believe it, I think,” Amethar says, bringing the poison to his eyeline. He feels stupid, telling Calroy this as if he’d know, but he wants to. Only Calroy, the man who betrayed him, could know how deep the betrayal runs. “Even with watersteel in my gut, and I didn’t want to believe. Even with the words coming from your own mouth.”

“What are you talking about,” Calroy says, stiffly. The pretence is gone.

Amethar shakes his head, lifting the clear vial to eye level to watch its clear liquid swirl. He can see right through it, now. “Does it bother you that I know something you don’t?”

A long pause. Calroy steadies himself, obviously shaken, and then, “Who told you?”

Amethar snorts. “You, Calroy. I’ve heard your stupid monologue too many times.”

Calroy looks taken aback, and Amethar sighs, lets the vials fall from his hand and smash on the ground. They shatter, shards of glass scattering like jellybeans across the ground.

Calroy inhales sharply, and lets out a growl. A split-second later and the knife is out from behind his back.

“I don’t know what delusion you think you’re on, Amethar, but if you’re not fooled by me anymore, then I guess I won’t bother. I didn’t want to make a mess of my room, but I suppose you’ve already done that. Then again,” Calroy says, and his eyes spark with a hunger so deep Amethar could drown in it, “I suppose it won’t be my room much longer.”

Calroy leaps forward, and Amethar instinctively moves to block. Not fast enough; but he’s not bothered. He has what he’s come for this loop, and he’ll be back.

The knife finds its footing deep in Amethar’s chest, and the _pain_ —it hurts just the same as it had the first night. Amethar doesn’t meet Calroy’s eyes; there’s only so much of it he can take.

“It’s heavy,” Amethar complains.

Amethar is seventeen years old, and the sword in front of him is heavy in his hands. His sister, Rococoa Rocks, steps forward and takes his hands to line them back up on the hilt.

She chuckles, and the sound is low and steady, strong as her stance.

“Here, Amethar—move with your chest, not just your arms,” she says, demonstrating with a swing of Flickerish, the Twizzling Blade. She taps her breastplate with her fist, and then settles back into her battle stance. “One more time.”

Amethar wipes the sweat from his forehead, and does as he’s told. He lets out a yell, charging towards Rococoa, swinging with all the strength he can muster.

“Careful,” Rococoa says, parrying him back effortlessly. “Don’t just swing willy-nilly. Don’t lose control.”

“You,” Amethar pants. “Are. So. Annoying.”

He punctuates each word with another stroke, and Rococoa laughs. “You’re broadcasting your moves too much.”

Amethar swings forward. Rococoa waits, and then with a single strike, the sword comes tumbling out of Amethar’s hands, and he staggers and hits the ground hard. The point of Flickerish is up against his neck.

He groans, pushing aside the blade with his fingers. Rococoa lets him, smirking. Amethar moves to pick up his sword, lying in the dirt a few feet away.

It’s a hot day, the bright Candian sun beating onto one of the castle’s training fields. This is his first lesson with Rococoa, and he already hates it. Sword-fighting is about the only class he can concentrate in nowadays, the only class he thought he was good at—and Rococoa can fend him off as easily as batting away a particularly annoying sugar-fly.

“How are you so—” Amethar gestures at Rococoa, barely breaking a sweat. He already feels like toppling over in comparison.

She chuckles again. “Practice, Amethar. Doing the same thing over and over and over again. Perseverance. I’m used to it now. Come on, pick up your sword. One more time.”

“You said that five rounds ago!” Amethar says, but he adjusts the sword in his grip and charges forward again. His sword meets his sister's with a ringing peal.

“Don’t give up!” Rococoa says, voice ever steady, unyielding as a mountain. “Keep at it—”

She cuts off, because Amethar sidesteps suddenly, unusually, and uses that ever fleeting moment of surprise to try and catch her off guard. Light on his feet, his sword darts forward at the opening—

Rococoa shifts her feet, ground crunching beneath her soles, and like a tower moving its foundations, the opening is gone. Amethar’s sword slides down her blade and clashes against the guard of her sword, not making a dent. He curses, losing speed, and Rococoa twists and slams his sword down, shifting her blade to his neck before he can react.

She laughs, genuine, and the very ground seems to shake with the force of it. She lifts her sword from his neck. “Well done, Amethar! You almost had me.”

Amethar rolls his eyes, dusts himself off. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious,” Rococoa says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You’re good at this, you know. Choosing to continue fighting is harder than giving up.”

Amethar is seventeen years old, and the sword in front of him is heavy in his hands. Light in his hands? He doesn’t know. He frowns.

The memory shakes, for suddenly Amethar is aware that it is a memory.

Amethar is forty-eight years old, and he’s standing in front of his sister, long-gone, with arrow wounds in her chest as deep as her gaze.

“Don’t give up, Amethar,” Rococoa says, and her voice is deep and weary, as the wounds in her chest bleed and bleed.

She’s speaking to the little fifteen year old boy struggling to keep up his sword—

—and she’s speaking to the old, war-weary man who has lost everything—

“Soldier on.”

Amethar wakes up.

Sucks in a deep breath as the echo of pain slowly lets him go. The weight of Rococoa’s hand on his shoulder shakes him, and again he tries to breathe through the grief that settles on his chest.

What he learnt that loop confirms his worst fear—there’s no way they can take the castle back, not with the Knights Gumbar out, and not with all the reinforcements and back-up Calroy has. Amethar knows the best they can aim for is an escape. Getting Caramelinda out and running, so that his family will be safe, at least. If they’re lucky they can seek refuge in the Dairy Islands, garner support and troops and find a way to take back Candia. If they’re not—this might be the last time he ever sees Castle Candy.

Amethar’s caught in an intricate web, woven around him so slowly he hadn’t even realised it was happening. Silk threads laid down around him over the course of twenty-five years, suddenly pulled tight with one tug.

He sighs and stands. Focus. There’s a chance here, Amethar thinks. He knows something they do not. This timeloop is a curse, but maybe it’s also a blessing—he can’t die. He’s okay, which means Theo is okay.

Amethar walks onto the deck, and the noon sun beats down harsh against the Cola River.

——————————

Amethar explains, again.

“Like, look, I can tell you that Theo is about to come running up from below deck with Sprinkle right about… now—”

On cue, the door to below deck slams open, and a frantic Theo comes barrelling out as Sprinkle leaps into his face. Amethar feels a surge of relief when he hears Theo’s familiar shout. He’s okay. Amethar knows duty has always driven Theo forward, and sacrifice along with it, but the truth of last night hits him heavy in the chest.

“Afternoon, Theo.”

Theo looks over at him, sheepish, and he lowers his head in greeting, all while holding a jerking Sprinkle at arms’ length.

“Afternoon, my King—oh,” Theo says, as Amethar scoops him into a hug. “Your majesty?”

“Just good to see you, Theo.”

“Um, okay,” he says, and then, nodding at Manta Ray, “Afternoon, Manta Ray. 

“…Afternoon, Gumbar,” Manta Ray says, bewildered, and then shoots Amethar a conspiring look, dropping his voice to a whisper. “How did you—”

Amethar lets Theo go and matches Manta Ray’s whisper. “Wait, Theo’s about to freak out about Jet and Ruby being on the bulwarks.”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that, your majesty. I’m about to what?” Theo says, a bit miffed at their discussing right in front of him. “Are you both okay? Did you want me to—oh my god, Jet, Ruby get _off_ the railing, are you girls insane—”

Amethar grabs the back of Theo’s armour just before he gets out of reach. “Oi, Theo, stay here, the girls’ll be fine; I’d know. We need to talk. This is important, and you have to believe me no matter what, okay? Promise.”

“You know I’ve got your back, your majesty.”

Amethar smiles. “I do.”

——————————

They pull into Dulcington, sleeping and quiet as it always is. The ship docks lightly, ready to pull away the moment Amethar returns with Caramelinda.

Jet, Ruby, and Amethar sneak up through Dulcington alone, hidden under the the cover of the night and the mists. When they reach the wall of the castle, Amethar raises his hand to pause them; counts the minutes before the guards pass—and then he gets Ruby to _Mage Hand_ the rope up.

They start their ascent and make it to the top of the wall with no complications, thanks to Amethar’s timed knowledge from previous loops. They have five more minutes until the next patrol walks around.

Amethar hugs them fiercely. “Wait ’til I get down to untie my rope, and then get back to the ship. I’ll be back soon.”

“Get Mom out safe, okay?” Jet says, tearfully.

“I will. I promise,” Amethar says. “We’ll be okay.”

Ruby nods, and with a few mumbled words, casts _Invisibility_ on him. Amethar starts his descent onto the castle grounds.

When he’s down safe and the rope slackens, Ruby unties it, and the girls vanish from sight. Amethar sighs, and hopes they listen to him to get back to the ship safe. And then he runs inside, cloth tied around his boots again, and heads straight for their bedchambers. He pauses around certain bends in the corridor, waiting for guards to pass, and wisps straight past them, invisibility making him ghost through the castle.

As he expected, there are guards around Caramelinda’s room. This is the tricky part; he has to attack to get rid of them, and the invisibility will break. From this point onwards, he’ll be relying on his own knowledge of the previous loops.

He charges, knocks the guards out with practice efficiency. There’s unavoidable noise in combat, but Amethar uses their disorientation to strike as quickly as he can. They fall.

Amethar raises his hand to open the door, and then pauses, remembering his fatal mistake before. Instead, he knocks.

“Caramelinda—it’s Amethar. It’s me. Jet and Ruby are safe.”

There’s no response.

“Please. Trust me. I know you have a trap behind the door. I promise I’ll explain everything, but you need to let me in.”

There’s another tense moment where Amethar feels like someone will turn around the corner at any second, but then there’s a flare of magic, and the door opens a crack.

“Amethar? You’re alive,” Caramelinda whispers. She still has her nightdress on and a silk bonnet around her hair, but there’s relief on her face as she takes in Amethar, and more than a little caution. “What are you doing here?”

He nods. “I’m alive. The girls are too—but it’s not safe here. I need to get you out.”

It takes her a bit of convincing, like last time, but she listens, eventually. Caramelinda moves for the door, but Amethar stops her. “Wait. We’ve got a bit of time before the guards come by.”

She sends him a curious look, but listens. A minute later, Amethar opens the door, and still holding Caramelinda’s hand, they run across the castle.

There’s a shift change right about now, and Amethar uses the distraction to clamber over another wall, lifting Caramelinda behind him. The secret exit is just around the corner. They’re almost out of the castle.

The alarm bells start to ring.

Caramelinda jolts, panicked, and Amethar holds his breath as they run across the courtyard, clamber into the tunnel and stumble down the crumbling rock candy walls. It’s dark as licorice inside, but Caramelinda provides some easy light with her magic. They make it to the other side unscathed.

Amethar gestures to Dulcington, and Caramelinda nods. They run across the fields, sneaking past the quiet shopfronts and houses of the town to find Manta Ray waiting for them down below, ready to sail the moment they climb aboard the Bel Baby.

Their feet hit the deck—and the ship pushes off from Port.

It’s gone perfectly. They’re safe. Amethar laughs breathlessly as Caramelinda lets out a cry at the sight of Jet and Ruby, hugging them as tight as she can as tears fall down her face. Amethar pulls them all into a crushing hug, and Caramelinda stiffens, but she relaxes into it.

Caramelinda sighs, wiping the tears from her face. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”

“I know,” Amethar says, still in shock that he’s survived, that they’re safe. He’s never—he’s never escaped Calroy’s hand. “I know, but I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“What’s going on, Amethar?” she asks, softly. “How did you find out?”

“You’re not going to believe me,” Amethar says. Caramelinda glares, so he sits down, the reality of their survival finally sinking in.

He sighs. “I’m caught in a timeloop. Like—Candian magic, where I’m trapped in the same day, and every time I die, I wake up back here. That’s how I know what’s going to happen.”

Caramelinda’s eyes widen. “What? Is it—”

“It’s not Lazuli,” Amethar says, sadly. “It’s not like one of her visions—this is different.”

“Then?” Caramelinda looks like she’s having trouble processing it. “You had us flee Castle Candy on a—an illusion?”

“Caramelinda,” Amethar says, tired. “You know I trusted Calroy with my life. You know I wouldn’t say this unless I knew for sure.”

She sighs, and is silent for a long time. Finally, she says, “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” Amethar says. “But he’s killed me every night—this is the only one where I’ve survived. We escaped.”

“I’m not talking about the spell—this is bigger than you, Amethar. Candia is—” Caramelinda says, and then her knees give way and she sits down heavily next to Amethar. “Bulb above. Candia is lost. What do we do now?”

Her voice trembles with an angry grief. Amethar doesn’t know what to say.“I don’t know,” he says, softly. “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out together.“

“That’ll be a first,” Caramelinda says, bitter. Amethar takes it, and doesn’t respond. He didn’t think all their problems would be fixed just be surviving—but it still stings.

It’s almost light, he realises; the skies fading from deep navy into gold.

The first light of sunrise makes its slow way across the horizon, flushing the ship in the brilliant orange pink glow of light—

Amethar wakes up to the sight of golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola on the side of a ship.

He jerks up, cold shock running through his bones—

What? But he—but they were safe, they’d survived, he hadn’t died—

Amethar stumbles out of bed, runs out into the open air of the deck. The bright glare of the noon sun hits him, the sharp familiar breeze of the Cola, the cacophonous screeching of the honey herons that swarm the ship. They’re back—

“Amethar!” Manta Ray Jack calls, striding over from his place at the rigging. “Finally risen from your beauty sleep, I see. What’re you in such a rush for?”

“No, no, no, _no_ —”

“Amethar?” Manta Ray says, “Y’okay?”

Amethar lets out a string of swears, slamming his fist against the ship’s railing. He’d done it, he’d survived, why is he back here?

“Woah there, Amethar.” Manta Ray says. “What’s going on?”

Again, Amethar thinks. He has to escape again—

“Manta,” Amethar says, conjuring his most serious voice. “I’m going to tell you something crazy, and you have to promise to believe me.”

———————

It doesn’t work.

Amethar stands on the deck of the Baby Bel, Caramelinda by his side, shaken but okay, as Manta Ray hoists the sails and pushes off from Dulcington dock. They’re safe, they hadn’t tried to fight back; Amethar had snuck in like he had before, movements like clockwork, had knocked on the door before she’d sprung her trap, had led her to the secret entrance and made it all the way back to the ship before Calroy’s troops had even made it out of the castle. No one died.

It’s not enough.

The first light of sunrise makes its slow way across the horizon, flushing the ship in the brilliant orange pink glow of light—

Amethar wakes up.

He sits up, eyes darting back and forth in a panic—he doesn’t know what to do. The loop doesn’t just reset when he dies, then, but at sunrise. He’s just being forced to live through this day over and over and over—

Why? How far does it go?

Amethar runs up onto the deck, right up to the helm, and yanks on the wheel, hard. Manta Ray yells at him in confusion and shock, as half the crew stumble with the sudden direction change.

“Amethar—what are you doing?” Manta Ray cries, trying to wrestle it back from him.

“We need to get away, Jack. Cut our losses and get out.” Amethar pleads. “I need to—to see how far this goes.”

Theo stumbles out, Cumulous joins them on deck, trying to reason with him. He explains everything, and knows they don’t fully believe him, but he doesn’t let them stop him. He ignores the look of pity on Manta Ray’s face. They’re losing time.

The Bel Baby sails back up the Cola River, aiming for the open sea. Jet and Ruby trust him so wholeheartedly, and it makes Amethar feel nauseous with how much he loves them and how many times he’s lost them. 

They make it all the way back to Port Syrup before the sun rises.

The light hits the deck like sheets of orange silk—

Amethar wakes up.

—————————

There’s a knock at the door.

“Amethar—Oh,” Cal says. “Bad time? Good time?”

His voice falls into a teasing lilt, and all Amethar can hear is the blood that had been behind it last night, thick and dark as tar. He turns, rather than responding, and picks up a small shortsword from the back of the room.

“Look,” Calroy starts, eyeing the blade but ignoring it for now, “Instead of being in the place where your wife will come back to go to sleep and maybe make you feel terrible some more, let’s—I don’t know. Wanna go take a shit in a field?”

Amethar sighs, the hilt of the sword in his hand—and sheathes it, setting his shoulders back and standing. Calroy’s waiting for a response, and when he doesn’t get one, he says, “In all honesty, the ramparts of the castle need some tending to and I think we should talk about what we do if Sir Maillard fails to hold them at the Cola River.”

Amethar swallows back his rising bile, and follows Calroy onto the parapets.

It’s a beautiful night.

The same one. Amethar watches the Candian mists hover on the horizon, the moon smiling taciturn with her secrets. Time drips like chocolate as he walks, sticky and cloying around his feet.

“Look at all those tents,” Cal says. “Like twenty years of peace just flew by, huh?”

“Back to where we started,” Amethar says, and sees the spattering of Ceresian and Vegetanian tents in the distance, just under the forest tree-line. War is coming, Caramelinda had said, and not realised it was already here.

Cal is behind him. “I guess so.”

Amethar turns, catches the knife on the metal cuffs on his arms as it thrusts forward. Calroy recoils in shock as the water ricochets, letting out a hiss as it splatters dangerously around them.

He snarls, “How did you—”

Amethar reaches up and snatches Calroy’s wrist before he can bring the knife down again. “Why, Cal?” he asks, as if he doesn’t know. As if he can look Calroy in the eyes and find something that doesn’t hurt.

Calroy, recovering from his shock, jerks against Amethar’s grip, trying to twist his hand out of the grip while the other reaches no doubt for another knife. Amethar grunts with the effort of holding him, but doesn’t yield—he spins and shoves Calroy against the castle balustrade, both of them teetering precariously off the edge. He crushes Calroy’s wrist until he’s forced to let go of the knife, which plummets down to the canyon below.

“How are you—let _go_ of me,” Calroy hisses, and it is not the Calroy Amethar knew. There are a million questions Amethar wants to ask, should ask, should gather information for when he next tries to get out of the loop, about his enemies, about his family, about the troops and their locations—

There are a million questions Amethar wants to ask, but when he looks at Calroy in front of him, the only question that comes to him is:

“Was any of it real?”

“What?” Calroy exhales, surprised into stillness.

“Twenty-five years,” Amethar says, and hates the way his voice shakes. “Did they mean nothing to you? _Was any of it real?_ ”

Calroy’s eyes go dark, lip curling. “Does it matter?”

“It should’ve! It mattered to _me_ , even after _everything_ —” Amethar cuts himself off. He doesn’t know.

Calroy breathes hard, glaring viciously—his eyes flash, which is all the warning Amethar has before Calroy twists in his grasp again, lightning-quick, legs kicking out and shoving Amethar back. There’s another knife in Calroy’s hand in an instant, but Amethar reaches for the shortsword at his belt and deflects the blow just in time, hard enough to throw Calroy off-balance for just a second. He swings his sword back, aiming at the flat of Calroy’s knife, as he twists it and knocks it smoothly out of his grip in one familiar motion. The sword is at Calroy’s throat before he can recover.

Calroy lets out a dark laugh, backing up until his back hits the castle balustrade. “I taught you that move.”

Amethar swallows, hard. “Yes. You did. Sparring in the Ceresian trenches in Highbright twenty years ago. We found our own space in the wheat fields because I—”

“—because you wanted to avoid the rest of the knights.” Calroy’s eyes glint. “I remember.“

A furious grief roars up in Amethar then, makes him push the sword forward into Calroy’s throat until it draws blood, makes ragged breaths tear from his lungs like glass. “Then why—How could you, Calroy—I _loved_ you—”

“The person you loved never existed,” Calroy interrupts, sneering. Blood wells up from where the sword meets his throat, begins to drip down the golden blade. Amethar inhales sharply.

Calroy swallows, and Amethar watches his throat jump against the edge of the sword. “What are you waiting for, Amethar. Kill me.”

Amethar tightens his jaw, doesn’t respond.

“Fine. Maybe this will help,” Calroy says, pushing forward against the sword, and Amethar hates that he finds himself instinctively loosening the pressure. Calroy smiles. “I hated you from the moment I met you, you know? The rich, hot-headed prince, foolish as he was lucky. Naive enough to believe I was in danger from the very Ceresians you’d caught me conspiring with. I realised, then, how easy it would be to become your friend. To lie my way into power.”

“Shut up,” Amethar grits out.

“You know, at least when Rococoa caught me doing the very same, she wasn’t stupid enough to believe otherwise. But your sisters _were_ always smarter than you. No, I had to have her shot down for that one.”

Calroy presses forward, taunting even with the sword at his throat, “You know how many arrows it took, Amethar? Over a dozen. And still it wouldn’t quell her anger, still she had the strength to curse me until the last arrow hit her throat—”

“Shut _up_!” And the sword thrusts forward in Amethar’s hands almost of its own accord, digs itself into Calroy’s throat. He gasps wetly, eyes blown wide. 

Amethar yanks the sword away, stumbling back, arms almost reaching out instinctively to hold Calroy before he forces himself to stop short. The corner of Calroy’s mouth raises ever so slightly, and then he crumples back against the brick, awful gurgling sounds coming from his throat as he chokes on his own blood. Amethar closes his eyes and turns away. After what feels like forever, the sound stops.

Amethar opens his eyes.

Calroy stares out at him, eyes blank, a bloody broken corpse. Amethar kneels down and reaches out his hand to close Calroy’s eyes.

And then he sits, leaning back against the cold brick, and waits for dawn.

Amethar Rocks wakes up to the sight of golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola on the side of a ship.

He pushes the palms of his hands into his eyes, breathes heavily and deeply until the trembling in his body subsides.

The wood of the ship creaks below him as he makes his way onto the deck.

He doesn’t leave the ship this time, refusing to join everyone when they arrive in Dulcington and make their way up to the castle. He doesn’t know what to say to Theo’s bewildered questions, brushes Jet and Ruby’s concerns off. He makes up some excuse about staying to stand guard, lets them go up to the castle.

House Rocks falls. Amethar watches from afar as the banners of House Cruller unfurl from the castle, as the troops hidden amongst the woods muster and advance towards Dulcington docks; they know he’s there. He sees small pink and black figures leaving the castle and racing across the field—and watches them fall one by one. He doesn’t see Theo or Caramelinda’s figures leave at all.

Manta Ray paces back and forth, swearing, shouting orders to his crew, winding the anchor back up as fast as they can and setting sail as the troops approach. The pounding of their feet echo on the wood of the dock, and Amethar can only watch as the archers take aim. Arrows fire, wreathed in flames that lick up the canvas and set the wood of the ship burning and send thick smoke into the air.

The Bel Baby sinks. Cola fills his lungs.

Amethar wakes up.

Again; the heat of the sun’s glare, the shrieks of the honey herons, the beating of the waves against the hull of the ship.

Calroy’s knife is cold in his chest—his stomach—the small of his back—the curve of his neck—

He wakes up and up and up—

He falls down and down and down.

Again.

Again.

Again.

The Sugar-plum Fairy smiles without teeth, voice coated sickly sweet. “How can I help you, your majesty?”

“What’s going on,” Amethar says, tired. Lapin’s note and the broken teacup sit at his feet, Cumulous waiting for him a few feet away. “You’re a Candian god, aren’t you? Are you doing this? Is Lazuli?”

The Sugar-plum Fairy’s laugh is like the cracking of glass. “I am a god, yes, but do not confuse that with omnipotence. And no, it is not the dear Archmage either. She wishes she was so powerful.”

“Then _what_?” Amethar asks, frustrated.

The fairy tilts her head, eyes blinking unevenly. “I cannot tell you, but I will say it is as much an inconvenience for me as it is for you. I have plans in motion that continue to be disrupted.”

“Then help me stop it.”

“I cannot,” she says, and to her credit, she does sound bitter. “You’ve caught yourself in this, and only you can stop this.”

Amethar groans. “How!? No one has told me why any of this is happening. How can I possibly stop this?”

The Sugar-plum Fairy giggles, pointing to the ground with her sharp fingers. Amethar watches the chitin of her joints click as she moves them. “Fall, ruler of Candia. Fall, and rise again.”

Amethar blinks, and then she’s gone.

He spends one loop rifling through Caramelinda’s study, sure he’s missed something.

Caramelinda can’t be behind this—she has suffered too long on the throne to throw it all away. He knows her.

Amethar thought he knew Calroy too.

With Theo’s help, he searches her study, and there’s nothing damning in her letters.

Theo frowns, “There’s nothing but letters and missives sent from Comida, Caramelinda’s spies and contacts informing her of what happened.”

Amethar takes a breath. “Read them all.”

There are dozens of them. “Your majesty—”

Amethar sits down at the deck, rubbing his eyes. “Read them all to me, Theo.”

Theo does. There are letters of the danger all Candians are in, the people they’ll lose and the ones they’ve already lost. Families who’d lived in Comida for years being imprisoned and their homes raided. The borders of Candia are besieged, the Candian priests serving in other nations pleading for help—

Theo reads them all, and Amethar listens.

These are the lives he’s endangered. The people he’s failed. He makes Theo read through every letter in Caramelinda’s desk, right up until Calroy finds him, slumped over with tears tracing their way down his cheeks.

“Amethar?” he says, “Sir Theo? What are you doing?”

Theo steps forward, shield already up, but Amethar stands and puts a hand in front of him.

“I don’t need anyone else dying for me,” he says, and then turns to Calroy, raising his sword.

He dies, again. The pain of the knife still hurts as much as it did the first time.

Stop, he wants to shout into the darkness. Stop, stop, stop. Please. Let me stay here, like this, forever.

“Look at all those tents,” Calroy says, and time slips past Amethar’s fingers like the wind.

Let me go back, Amethar pleads silently to the night, stars hanging silver in the air as if on string.

“Like twenty years of peace just flew by, huh?” Calroy says, and the crescent of the moon smiles back, cold and unforgiving.

Amethar wakes up.

“How could you never tell me?” Caramelinda says.

“I didn’t tell anybody. I… I thought this was one of those things you could never talk about and it would never be a problem. No one was ever meant to find out.”

“Do you know how many people will die from this, Amethar? Do you know how many people have died already?” Caramelinda demands.

“Over seven hundred,” Amethar says, and Caramelinda’s eyes widen. “The families in Candia, the villages at the borders being raided—more if we count the soldiers fallen in battle at the frontlines.”

Caramelinda looks at Amethar like she doesn’t recognise him.

Amethar wakes up.

He feels like he’s watching a play happen from a far, scenes off a script that he’s hardly in anymore.

This timeloop wasn’t a blessing, it wasn’t a chance to fix things. It’s a curse. He’s being forced to live the worst moments of his life, his worst mistakes. Frustration turns to weariness to despair; he doesn’t know what the magic wants from him. Doesn’t know how to break out.

He’s standing up in the crow’s nest, holding Lazuli’s bow against the sunlight as if it can reveal any secrets to him.  Cumulous gives him a pitying look—this is what Amethar hates about explaining his situation. It’s always that look of pity before anything else.

“Look, I know s aying it out loud sounds stupid. But Lazuli would know what to do, and you and Theo are the closest people I have to her right now, and Theo thinks I’m fruit-loopy—I just—” Amethar halts. His hands fall from where they were gesturing, landing on the railing with a thump. “God. I _miss_ her, Cumulous. I miss them all. I wish they were here.”

Cumulous softens, raises his hand tentatively to put it on Amethar’s arm. He sighs. “In answer to your question, your majesty, I don’t know. I don’t know if Lazuli had the strength to cast such a potent time spell after her death—but I do know her essence lives on in many ways, even when she’s gone. Death is as elusive as it is concrete.”

Amethar lets out a low laugh. “Oh, I know that better than most. I don’t know how much of the past twenty years could be described as ‘ _living_ ’. Even before all of this happened.”

Cumulous gives him an inscrutable look. “We will all die, your highness. And I apologise if that is too blunt, but I don’t mean rudely. I mean—we live, and we die, and we move on, and the people around us do the same. A cycle.”

“Is that what the Order of the Spinning Star teaches? Sounds tragic.”

Cumulous smiles and shakes his head. “I think it’s hopeful. Lazuli—she was always in motion. Always looking forward, even past the point of her own destruction. I think she knew better than anyone that life is like… a ripple. Each choice you make impacts the next one. A cycle, yes, but her visions were never definite, right? They changed. They moved forward. It’s never too late.”

Cumulous’ eyes are sad. Despite his light stance, Amethar is envious of the surety and conviction he has. Amethar nods, silent.

Under the light of the bright noon sun, the honey herons squawk.

Amethar wakes up.

He tries to take Castle Candy back again and again, tweaking each plan a little bit more—they never win. The castle is too fortified, and Calroy is too prepared, and they’re not strong enough. They fall every time, and he’s sick of seeing his loved ones die, reset or not. Amethar can’t remember how many times he’s sat through the same hasty onboard war council, explaining everything over and over again.

When the council ends, Theo gives Amethar a scrutinising look from beside him. His knight sighs when Amethar doesn’t meet his eyes, and then speaks up. “Last time—what happened, Amethar?”

“I failed,” Amethar says, wretched. “I keep failing, Theo.”

“We… died?”

Amethar nods.

Theo is silent as he processes. “How do I not remember any of it?”

Amethar shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I’m trapped in this Bulb-forsaken curse—”

He cuts himself off.

“If anyone could get through it,” Theo says. “Could figure it out, it’s you, Amethar. The Unfallen.”

Amethar flinches at the words. “I don’t care about my title, Theo.” His voice shakes with anger. “I just want out.”

“I’m sorry, your majesty. I didn’t mean it that way—”

“No, I’m sorry, I know you didn’t. I just—I never asked for this, Theo. I never wanted to be King, to be The Unfallen. God,” Amethar says coarsely, “I would trade every single stupid title I have to get my sisters back, Theo.”

Theo doesn’t respond for a moment, but then, the words tripping out his mouth before he can stop them, “But you can’t.”

And then, quickly and mortified, “Wait, that came out too bluntly, sorry—I don’t intend to compare my loss to yours, but I understand. I’m grieving as well. We’re all doing our best to deal with it.”

“I just mean that,“ Theo continues, choosing his words carefully, “I don’t want the grief I feel to stop me from changing things.”

Amethar can’t find anything to say, just staring. Theo seems to wilt under his gaze.

“Sorry, your majesty, that was out of line, I’m going to—I’ll go now,” he says, drawing in on himself and shuffling away.

Amethar puts his arm on Theo’s shoulder before he’s out of range. “No. I think I needed to hear that.”

Theo looks back, still nervous. Theo’s words sting, but Amethar means it. He thumps Theo on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

Theo’s smile is cautious but genuine. “Always, your majesty.”

They make it all the way to Dulcington, this time. They’re fighting against troops from three different nations in the streets of a small town.

Amethar watches Theo lower his head at Amethar again as he holds back Muffinfield soldiers, and his words from earlier in the day rattle in his head. Amethar swings Payment Day in an arc around him, fighting back to back with Theo until they’re both struggling to stand, until they’re struggling to breathe—

Amethar wakes up.

Golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola. Again.

When he reaches the castle, he pulls Caramelinda into a hug out of the blue, holding tight to her as she makes an angry noise.

“Amethar, what are you—”

“I’m sorry, Caramelinda,” he says, and he’s apologising to her now and he’s apologising to her for every single night.

She freezes, and then to Amethar’s great surprise, she softens. Leans into the hug for a moment, and then just as quickly, she breaks it. “Don’t. This doesn’t fix anything—you can’t come back here and apologise as if—”

Caramelinda turns to face the window, and doesn’t look at him. “How could you never tell me?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, again. “I’ll change—”

Caramelinda shakes her head and cuts him off. “It's not just—It's not just this, Amethar, it’s—it's. Twenty years. Every day for the past twenty years where you refused to step up as a king, as a father, where you left me to rule this entire kingdom by myself. Don't tell me you can do better, I don't want to hear it. There is nothing you can do to change what you've already done.”

“I know. But I’m gonna be better, Caramelinda, I promise.”

Caramelinda laughs. “Where was this ten years ago? Where was this last _month_? Did it really only take more death and destruction for you to realise?”

The weight of her voice makes Amethar step back. “I don’t know. Yes. I just—” Amethar sighs. “I’m not a good person, Caramelinda.“

“Don’t! Don’t.“ Caramelinda raises a hand up, angry. “You are not a bad person, Amethar. You are a bad king. You are a bad husband. And unless you step up, I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“Tell me,” she asks, reticence keeping her voice level. “Do you really want to be King, Amethar?”

“…I don’t know.” And Amethar knows even as he says it that it’s not enough.

“Then I don’t want to hear it. Because I _have_ to be Queen. I know this every day I wake up—It doesn’t matter what I want. There is no choice—Candia needs a queen, and I will be one.”

Amethar draws in on himself, as Caramelinda’s voice fills this room like a physical presence.

“It’s been twenty years,” she says. “What do _you_ want, Amethar?”

Amethar rubs at his eyes, not meeting her gaze. “I don’t know. To be better. To save my friends and family. To not have to see anything like what I did twenty years ago ever again!”

Caramelinda walks towards the door, rests her hand on the doorknob. “Then you’re going to have to try harder. Amethar the Unfallen. Let’s see if Candia can earn the same title.”

The door slams shut behind her.

Amethar sighs, sits down. Theo is right, but Amethar doesn’t know how to reverse the harm he’s done. He _can’t_. 

He wants to go back. Wishes he could rewind time like sheathing a blade. Before the day of Liam’s trial, before he’d left for the Grand Tournament, before he’d even married Catherine Ghee. Too much blood has been spilt on his name, and now his friends and family carry scars that were all but dealt by his hand.

There’s a knock at the door. 

Amethar dies, like he did the loop before, and the loop before that, and before that—

Amethar wakes up.

——————————

There’s a knock at the door. 

Amethar turns on cue, hears Calroy’s wince. “Bad time? Good t—”

“Come to take me up to the parapets to stab me and throw my body over the castle walls?” Amethar interrupts, dryly.

Calroy’s eyes widen, but a split-second later it falls back into crafted confusion. Amethar notices these things now. The act Calroy wields as subtly as breathing, the moments where it fractures ever so slightly, the moments where it seems like it never ends. Amethar wants to push it like a bruise, wants to slip his fingers into the cracks and pry off the mask and tear an answer out of him—was any of it real? If he digs deep enough, will he ever find the man he knew?

“W-what?” Calroy asks, face so perfectly innocent and concerned that it makes Amethar feel sick. “Stab you? What are you talking about, Amethar?”

“The dagger’s under your doublet, right? Water-steel, from Alfredi.”

“Amethar, I’m… unarmed, you know that.” Calroy laughs blithely, though he’s obviously unnerved. “Are you sure you’re feeling quite alright? This isn’t like you. I don’t doubt weeks of being on the run has made you paranoid, but you’re safe here.”

“You have at least two poisons up your sleeves, and three more in your quarters should those fail. Ceresian tents are out in the fields, Muffinfield soldiers are waiting for your command, and I suspect you’ve already gone to alert the Bulbian forces mustered in the peppermint groves. Did I miss anything?”

He watches as Calroy tries and struggles to understand, speechless for once in his life. “How—”

“We’ve done this before.”

Calroy’s face hardens, and—ah. The facade dropped. That’s a face Amethar recognises. “I don’t know what magic is going on here—”

Amethar laughs, hollow. “And you think I do? I’ve lived this day dozens of times, Cal. My best friend kills me in every single one.”

There’s a long pause, and then Calroy, face impassive, silently locks the door behind them. “So you know what has to happen, then.” He tilts his head, steps forward. “A vision from Lazuli? It would be fitting that she’d come back to haunt me, even now. How much do you know?” 

Amethar looks Calroy in the eyes, and doesn’t temper his grief. “I know enough. You killed Rococoa.”

Calroy’s eyes widen minutely. He smirks. “You knew? And is there a reason I’m not dead where I stand?”

Amethar shakes his head. “You don’t understand. It’s not a vision, Cal—” and Amethar’s voice chokes on the nickname that still comes to him easy, “—I’ve quite literally lived this day over and over and over. It ends in blood every time, and I’m tired of having yours on my hands.”

Calroy’s jaw tightens. “You’ve killed me before, then.”

Amethar doesn’t look away. “Yes.”

Calroy’s the one to break eye contact, swallowing hard. “Well, I can’t say that’s reassuring to hear, but—”

Calroy leaps forward in a sudden movement, dagger out in a flash as he strikes, vicious, and Amethar lets him. The dagger drives into his chest—and there's that pain, so familiar he can pinpoint the way the burn spreads across each of his limbs, the way it freezes his muscles and makes him choke blood.

Calroy, startled at the lack of resistance, frowns. Amethar just looks at him, weary and lost. He’s tired, he thinks. He’s tired of this endless cycle, of watching Calroy’s expression shift into cold hatred, of the knife in his back and the ache in his heart, of the grief that claws at his throat like broken glass. He thinks he just wants to find a way to make his death stick this time.

Calroy searches his face, taken aback, and his next words shake.

“What, given up already?” he says, eyes dark. “This really _isn’t_ like you.”

Amethar’s head jerks up at that. He looks at Calroy a final time as his vision darkens. 

He doesn’t know what he finds there.

Amethar blinks. A figure in blue robes stands in front of him.

“Lazuli?”

“Amethar.”

The gentle expression on her face is so familiar Amethar aches. “How are you—how are you here?”

“We’ve all been trying to reach you, Amethar,” Lazuli says. She looks exactly the same as she did the day she died, hair braided into a bun, glasses balanced precariously on the tip of her nose. “My connection to Candia’s magic is the only reason I could push all the way through.”

“Laz, what the hell is going on?” Amethar says. Looking at her like this, so very, very, alive, makes his chest tight. “Is this your doing? This timeloop shit, is it you?”

Lazuli shakes her head. “It’s not me.”

“Then what—”

“A ripple. One of its kind, I believe. I… even I don’t know it’s limits.”

“How do I stop it, Laz? I’ve tried—I don’t know how to stop him from killing me. He—” Amethar’s voice breaks. He swallows, hard. “He hates me. Always has. I don’t know how to change that, to stop him, to stop _this_.”

Lazuli looks at him sadly. “I don’t think there is a way. It’s bigger than either of you.”

Amethar lets out a frustrated groan. “Then how do I get out? I’m not _like_ you Lazuli, I’m not smart enough to figure this shit out I just—I’m sick of this stupid puzzle.”

Lazuli shakes her head. “You don’t need to be like me, Amethar. The fact that you’re not like me is precisely why Candia’s magic found its way to you.”

Amethar lets out a frustrated groan. “Is that it? More confusing answers that don’t really say anything? He killed Rococoa, Laz. Did you know that? Did you see any of this coming? Did you even try to _stop it_?” 

Lazuli inhales sharply, and Amethar immediately blanches in regret, sighs and rubs at his eyes.

“Shit,” he breathes. “Laz, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, I—” 

“No.” Lazuli sighs. “You have every right to be angry. I can’t tell you about the magic you’ve found yourself in now, but the betrayal… well. You know timelines are fickle beings. I saw a hundred timelines where it happened, and a thousand more where it didn’t. I saw your happiness, Amethar. I took a risk. I’m sorry.”

Amethar lets out a shaky breath, nods. He knows. Lazuli has told him about her powers before. He’s just so, so tired. He just wants to find one timeline where the people he loves don’t leave him.

“I wish I’d never loved in the first place,” Amethar says, voice weak.

Lazuli, eyes sad, smiles at him. “No, you don’t. And that is your greatest strength.” Her hand reaches out to cup his cheek, tilts Amethar’s head up to look at her, and—

—he’s nine again, fallen from a tree directly into Lazuli’s arms as she’d warned him—

—he’s twelve, sneaking out of class only to bump right into her blue robes—

—he’s eighteen, hugging her on his Saint’s Day as tight as he can, baby brother turned adult—

Lazuli tilts Amethar’s head up to look at her. “The one thing that stayed constant in every timeline I saw? You loved so fiercely and freely, Amethar, and it has offered you more strength than you will ever know. The pain won’t end, brother, not even now—but neither will you.”

She’s fading now. There are tears on Amethar’s cheeks, mirrored on her own.

“Laz, I…“ But the words don’t quite make it out.

She smiles. “I already know, remember?”

And then she’s gone.

Amethar Rocks wakes up to the sight of golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola on the side of a ship. His eyes are wet. He breathes a heavy sigh, reaches up to touch the spot on his cheek Lazuli’s hand had been.

 _Your greatest strength_.

He sits up, sharply—the pain in his chest is gone as it always is.

He’s alive.

Calroy’s voice echoes in his mind. _Given up already?_

Amethar looks at his hands, weary and tired.

What is he _doing?_

Amethar stands, makes his way up onto the deck. The sharp familiar breeze of the Cola fills his lungs and calms him. The honey herons swarm the ship, squawking loud under the beating of the noon sun. Beyond him, the bright surface of the river glistens.

It’s beautiful.

Amethar wakes up. Golden wood planks and the sound of lapping Cola.

Again.

He makes his way up to the deck, still holding that little bit of hope in him as he stares out at the river, breathes in the fresh air.

It’s quiet. The sun beats relentlessly overhead, and Jet and Ruby wave at him from the bulwarks. He frowns.

It takes him a moment to realise what’s wrong—there are no honey herons at the crow’s nest.

“Amethar!” Manta Ray calls, striding over from his place at the helm. His voice cuts clearly across the deck. “Finally risen from your beauty sleep, I see.”

Amethar is too unnerved by the uneasy calm to respond.

“We’ll be comin’ into Dulcington Port by midnight,” Manta Ray says. “Finally get you home.”

“Where are the honey herons?” Amethar asks, finally.

Manta Ray shrugs, disconcerted. “It’s a rare day where those shrieking pests aren’t flocking. A bad omen. Stay sharp, Amethar.”

Amethar takes it to heart, and gulps. Like clockwork, he steps aside to avoid Theo barrelling up onto the deck—

Theo doesn’t come.

Amethar stops mid-stride. He stares at the empty space beside him. _What’s going on?_

Amethar turns, stalking below deck to try and find his knight. Halfway down the ladder, he spots Theo coming down the corridor calmly, Sprinkle missing from his side.

“Theo?” Amethar says, confused.

“Your majesty? Good afternoon.” Theo greets.

“Where’s Sprinkle?” Amethar tries to peer over Theo’s shoulder, as if to catch a sign of the wriggling blue cylinder.

“Uh, sleeping in my quarters,” Theo answers. “Why?”

Amethar shakes his head, waving Theo off. He goes back up on deck; everything on the surface seems fine, but something’s wrong. The loops—they’ve never changed before. There is a part of him that is uneasy, and a part of him that is relieved.

Amethar walks across the ship, keeping alert as he takes note of where the rest of the people onboard are.

Manta Ray stands by Amethar when they finally pull into Dulcington Port. The ship rocks gently beneath them as the crew docks it; the town is shrouded in darkness. Amethar takes a deep breath as he catches sight of the small bright watchfires of Castle Candy beyond.

He dies, still. He dies as he always does, Calroy coming to find him in his room and plunging a dagger in his chest as he refuses to walk with him, or slipping poison in his tea before they go—

Amethar dies, and it feels like falling—

Amethar is twenty-one years old, and his suit itches as he links arms with his sister.

Sapphria Rocks smiles thinly as she walks through the garden party—a political affair that she claims is vitally important for them to attend, but that Amethar honestly couldn’t care less about. He trundles through the neatly cut grass in this Fructeran courtyard, content to just daydream as Sapphria makes her way from group to group.

She’s talking to a Vegetanian clergyman right now, expression cool and poised. There’s a moment where her expression falls for a split-second, before the conversation picks up like nothing’s happened. Sapphria is far too discreet to have tell, but Amethar has known her for long enough to know there’s something up.

“What happened?” Amethar says, when she finds him next. “Did the plan fail?”

Sapphria raises her eyebrows. “I don’t recall mentioning a plan to you.”

“You never not have a plan,” Amethar says, knowingly.

Sapphria hums. “My plans don’t _fail_ —they just change.”

“Uh huh,” Amethar says, amused.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Sapphria says, but she smiles. She passes a glass of wine to Amethar from the banquet table, before taking one for herself. “Politics is all about flexibility, Amethar. Don’t stay too attached to one idea, roll with the punches. Adapt.”

She smiles at Amethar, and her eyes are deep and black. “Keep moving.”

Sapphria is standing still, red robes against the dark expanse of the empty courtyard. Amethar feels a sudden jolt in his mind, blinks suddenly as the edges of the world shrink around him, whatever illusion beginning to fissure at the edges.

His sister’s voice rings in his mind, even as her lips refuse to move.

_You’re running out of time, Amethar._

_Keep moving._

_Let go—_

Amethar wakes up, and coughs blood.

He takes his hand away from his mouth as red stains mark his palm, sticky and cloying. He rubs at his throat, but his fingers brush over smooth even skin, even as he struggles to breathe through the thickness in his throat.

Throughout all the loops, he’s never retained a real injury before.

Amethar runs up to the deck. Jet and Ruby are sitting on the railing, swinging their legs.

There are no honey herons at the mast. Manta Ray is missing from the deck entirely, and no amount of waiting brings Theo charging up from below deck.

Something’s happening—he’s running out of time—

It occurs to Amethar that this might be it. The loops, whatever spell he’s in; it’s finally coming to an end. Whatever happens next—he might not wake up from it.

And then he realises, despite the despair of all his previous loops—he doesn’t want to die. There is so much he hasn’t said yet. So much he still wants to do. He’s not ready. Not yet.

Amethar paces, worrying at his sleeves as he waits for the ship to pull up to Dulcington. The world spins, time falling in and out of sync—the walk to the castle feels like it takes hours, and the reunion feels like a tiny sliver of a second.

Amethar walks down the castle corridors, and the portraits on the wall drip like caramel. The air is like static in his ears, his footsteps echoing around them louder than they should be. An eddy of reality pushing and pulling.

The door shuts close behind them.

“How could you never tell me?” Caramelinda says, like a rubber band about to snap. Her voice wavers in the air, like Amethar’s hearing it through water.

Wait, he thinks, _wait_ —he focusses on how his feet still feel solid on the ground, willing the world to come back into shape around him as if dragging at a canvas.

“I didn’t tell anybody,” he says, quickly. “And I know that’s not a good enough excuse. I don’t have one. I screwed up, and I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you more than screwed up, Amethar,” Caramelinda starts, angry.

“I know,” Amethar says, pleading. If this is the last time, he wants to apologise. Properly. “I know. I’ll change. I _have_ changed. I’m not the same man I was then.”

Caramelinda scoffs, “A mere three weeks ago, Amethar? After twenty years?”

Amethar opens his mouth to explain, to justify himself—He stops. “Yes,” Amethar says, simply, and it’s more true than she can know. 

The fight and anger that had been building in Caramelinda slowly deflates. It occurs to Amethar once again that they are all so, so tired.

“I can’t take back what I’ve done, Caramelinda, I know that. But I’ll be a better husband. I’ll try harder.”

“Tell me,” she asks, and suddenly her voice rings with the depth of a thousand others—

“Do you really want to be King, Amethar?”

“…Yes,” Amethar says, and is surprised to find that it’s true.

“Amethar the Unfallen,” Caramelinda says quietly, sounding like herself again, and the title no longer has quite the same sting. “Let’s see if Candia can earn the same title.”

The door slips shut behind her.

Amethar lets out a sigh of relief—and then he stumbles, a sharp pain in the small of his back—

The carpet beneath him gives out, drawing his legs in as he falls.

_Listen to me, baby brother._

_Love, sacrifice, healing—it comes with time. You have done it before, you must do it again—_

Amethar wakes up.

He tries to stand from the bed, and his knees give out as he collapses to the ground. He curses. He didn’t even get a full day that time—it’s getting weaker.

He struggles his way up onto the deck, wary that the loop beneath him could cave in at any time. He needs to—he needs to do something.

He leans on the bulwarks, shaking. Jet peers over from where she’s standing next to Ruby, and her face swims in Amethar’s vision, edges blurring and skipping around.

If this is—if this is the last time he gets to see his daughters, in this loop, like this—

Amethar starts, “Jet, look—”

“Pops, hey—”

Laughter bubbles up from both their throats. ”You go,” Jet says.

Amethar shakes his head. “No, what did you want to say?”

Jet smiles sadly. “Just wanted to check if you were okay. You seem… tired.”

“I _feel_ tired,” Amethar says honestly, and sighs. His arms tremble as he pushes them against the wood of the ship. “I’m scared, Jet. I keep—making these mistakes, and putting everyone I love in danger, and I’m so, so tired. I don’t know what to do.”

“You try again!” Jet says, like it’s obvious. And perhaps it is. “I know how it feels, but Dad, listen to me. You’re not alone. Don’t give up.”

Amethar laughs, surprised, and nods fiercely. “I can’t believe I’m letting my own daughter reassure me. Isn’t it meant to be the other way round?”

Jet grins. “What can I say? I’m one of a kind.”

“Aw, get over here,” Amethar says, holding his arms wide. Jet all but runs into his embrace. “Are _you_ okay?”

“Now I am,” Jet says, and wraps her arms tight around Amethar. They stand there for a moment, just enjoying each other’s warmth.

A moment later, she speaks up, voice so soft Amethar can barely hear her. “Pops, remember what you said to me, in the carriage, after we’d just escaped the cathedral fight?”

Amethar remembers. Hoping his children could find a future he would not be there to ruin—it had been the truth.

“Can you promise me to never say that again?” Jet says, sharp.

“What?”

“Don’t—don’t ever say you think things would be better if you were gone. It’s not true,” Jet says, fiercely. “You have to promise not to give up like that ever again, okay? No matter what happens.”

“Where is this coming from?” Amethar says, bemused.

“Promise!”

Amethar laughs weakly. “I promise.”

“And you have to promise to look after Ruby! I think she’ll lose herself in her grief if you don’t help her. Revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You’re all she’s got.”

“She’s got you too, you know,” Amethar says, raising his eyebrows. “But I promise.”

“Good,” Jet says.

“Something’s about to happen, Dad,” Jet says, and her voice sounds so far away. Again, the edges of reality seems to shrink around him, and Amethar shakes himself, refuses to let go of his daughter.

“What?” Amethar asks, weakly.

Jet turns to face him, and her eyes are dark.

“Something’s about to happen, and you have to be strong enough. You have to let go.”

Amethar stares, uncomprehending. His daughter’s voice sounds wise beyond her years.

“I—“

And then the moment breaks, and Jet buries her head in his chest again. “I love you so, so much, you know that? Thank you for everything.”

Her voice cracks, and Amethar comes back into himself, smiling sadly and squeezing her tight. “I love you too, baby. I love you too.”

Amethar presses a kiss to his daughter’s hair. She is so small and young in his arms, and he never wants to let go. He will have to, one way or the other, when the loop begins to crumble, but for now—he holds on tight.

“You’ll be a great Queen one day, Jet,” he says.

Jet looks up at him and grins like she could swallow the sun. Her eyes are wet. “I already am one.”

_Don’t give up, Amethar._

_Soldier on—_

Amethar wakes up to the night sky.

He jolts—he’s standing on the deck of the Bel Baby as it pulls into Dulcington dock. He doesn’t remember dying. The darkness above him is so starless and vast he feels like he’s falling—

“Amethar,” Manta Ray says, and jerks him out of his thoughts. “We’re here.”

Amethar looks at him, a silhouette lit in the gentle light of the moon.

“We’re here.”

“I—” Amethar lets Manta Ray lead him to the dock, walk down the plank towards the town. It’s falling apart. He moves forward, lifting his foot to step onto the Dulcington dock—

He puts his foot down, and he’s standing in his bedchambers.

 _What—?_ Amethar looks around, panicked. He doesn’t remember how he got here. He runs to the window; he knows when this is. Caramelinda has just left him, which means that Calroy is about to come in. The loops were endless, but they never changed like this, and they never skipped forward. They’re collapsing now, crumbling under their own weight, Amethar’s _running out of time—_

There’s a knock at the door.

“Bad time? Good time?” Calroy asks gently.

Amethar tenses, turns to face the man at his door. If this is the last time, then—

“Well,” Calroy grins, “Instead of being in the place where your wife will come back to go to sleep and maybe make you feel terrible some more, let's, I don't know.” He shoots Amethar a look steeped in years of friendship. “Wanna go take a shit in a field?” 

And the rage, the grief, the lies—something in Amethar shatters. He is so, so, tired.

“No,” he says, and he doesn’t know where the sentence is going even as he says it, “let’s just… Cal, do you wanna just sit down and have some tea?”

Calroy looks surprised, but not displeased. “I mean, I still say we get out of you and your wife’s room, but—”

Amethar laughs, and is surprised to find it genuine. “Yeah, yeah, let’s go.”

Calroy walks slowly. He insists on making the tea himself instead of bothering one of the servants this late at night. And Amethar—Amethar doesn’t know what he’s doing, except that he’s holding so tightly to something that never existed. Just let me have this, he thinks, to himself, to whatever out there is listening. 

One last time. 

He sighs and heads toward the wine cellar.

“Amethar? What are you—oh.” Calroy says, as Amethar returns with two bottles of Fructeran wine. 

Cal raises his eyebrows. “Is this really the best time to be getting drunk, my king?”

“ _You_ can’t tell me what to do. You’re not king yet,” he bites back, and Amethar pretends not to notice the bitterness lacing Calroy’s answering laugh. Instead, he pops the cork off one of the wine bottles and takes a big swig. It burns pleasantly down his throat.

They head to one of the courtyards, and Calroy asks, “…Are you alright, my king?”

Amethar hums in response.

“You’re not acting like yourself.”

“Feeling a little reckless, is all.”

Calroy raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t probe further. They reach a courtyard on the west side of the castle, one that Amethar knows well; it’s the best place to sit to watch the soldiers spar. When he was crowned, he wasn’t allowed to spar as much as he would’ve liked, so he would come and sit here to watch his knights. 

They settle at a table under the shade of a liquorice all-sorts tree, watching the torches burn slowly away. Calroy lets out a rueful laugh. 

“Did you ever think we’d see the war again?”

Amethar sighs. 

“I thought peace would last, this time.”

“Look, I think Sir Maillard will be able to hold them at the Cola River, but just in case—”

“Can we not? I know avoiding my duties is something everyone is sick of, but.” He pauses. “God, Cal, I’m _exhausted_.”

And Amethar must sound as tired as he feels, because Calroy opens his mouth to say something, and then closes it.

A beat. 

“Right. I can’t imagine the past couple of weeks have been easy on you.”

Amethar lets out a bitter laugh. “They really haven’t. They really, _really_ haven’t.” 

He sighs, and meets Calroy’s eyes. “But it’s—it’s good to see you, Cal.”

And Amethar finds that he means it. Call him delusional, but he just wants to pretend that it all meant something. Anything.

Calroy softens. “It’s good to see you too, Amethar.”

The light of the torches behind them flicker gently, almost out. Amethar wants to sit in this moment forever, even as time ticks endlessly on. 

“God,” Calroy says. “It’s like twenty years of peace just flew by, huh?”

“Right back to where we started,” Amethar says, and laughs a little to himself. The torches behind him start to flicker out. “Remember how we met? In that medic tent?”

Calroy stands, moves behind him—time’s up. There’s a voice in the back of his mind ridiculing him for trying to find his best friend of twenty-five years in his sister’s murderer. He closes his eyes and waits for the cold of the knife in his back. 

It doesn’t come. 

Instead, the torch reignites itself behind him, illuminating the courtyard back up again as Calroy sparks it with a flint. 

“I think you mean when I saved your ass on that battlefield,” Calroy answers, finally, sitting back down beside him.

Amethar laughs sharply. “It doesn’t count if you didn’t know it was me! But you knew, didn’t you?”

Calroy rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand, embarrassed. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have made my first words to the Prince of Candia ‘Watch your back’.”

“And then you shoved a shield at me and ran back out into the fight. Couldn’t even get a word out until I saw you at the tent. And even then you didn’t know!” He’s laughing now, and Amethar joins him. The memory comes back to him easily, though now he’s sure Calroy had known it was him. Even back then, he had been lying through his teeth.

“Was I _meant_ to assume the Prince of Candia would get treated at the same tent as the rest of us soldiers?”

“Oh please—there was no way I was gonna let them set up a whole private tent, you know me.” Amethar pulls a face. 

“Yeah,” Calroy says. “I do.”

Amethar lets his smile fade and takes a deep breath. The torchfire flickers, and everything wavers in its light, like reflections in water. Calroy’s face is in shadow, not looking at him, eyes crinkled at the memory. The echo. He doesn’t stop. Just lets his mouth run, bringing up the next memory he remembers, and Calroy listens, joins in, and they sit at the courtyard and watch the stars blink in the night air. 

Why are you doing this, Amethar wants to ask, but doesn’t. 

You hate me, he wants to say, but doesn’t. 

He doesn’t know where the mask begins and where it ends anymore. There’s a pressure on his chest, like breathing in a fog heady and rich, even though the night air is crisp and cold. He thinks if he moves too fast, the moment will shatter like a mirror. 

“Do you ever wish things could be different,” Amethar says.

Calroy passes the last of the tea to Amethar, hands shaking, and Amethar’s heart sinks in his chest again. He looks up—the sky has begun to lighten, even though the sun is nowhere to be seen. He takes a sip and tastes a familiar poison sweet on his tongue.

“Oh,” Amethar says, voice soft as frost, “There it is.”

Calroy falters, looking at him.

Amethar smiles sadly. “Sorry. I just wanted more time.”

Calroy’s eyes are clear, even though the whole night feels shrouded, like looking through a fog. His fingers tap at the edge of the table. 

“Well, Amethar, we all have to move on some time, don’t we?”

The words sink in like sediment at the bottom of a still lake. He meets Calroy’s eyes; whatever regret, guilt, that he hopes will be there is drowned by a resolve, an arrogance that he cannot begin to decipher. 

Amethar takes one last sip, and lets the world go black.

Amethar wakes up.

He is standing on the parapets, facing Calroy.

There is a knife in Calroy’s hands, and Amethar gasps, bringing his arm up to block the blow with his armguards. The knife shatters upon impact, and the bricks of the tower rumble as they begin to fall apart beneath him—

 _Are you ready to let go?_ Calroy says, but his lips do not move.

Amethar steps forward, and then he chokes, coughing on a river of blood that clogs his throat and spills red onto the golden deck of a ship he is not on—

Amethar opens his eyes to emptiness.

He heaves in rasping breaths, lungs drawing in nothingness.

It hurts—like a physical ache around his chest, like the whole ocean sits raging beneath his ribs, as he clutches his head and roars.

Cracks as deep as valleys push themselves through the shell of the darkness—his sisters voices swirl around him like sheets pulling back and forth in the wind—

Amethar wakes up.

It’s clear. It’s still. He’s standing in an empty field that stretches as far as the eye can see, the bright blue of the sky meeting the sharp pink of the candy grass.

_I’m so sorry, Amethar._

His sisters. Voices that whip like wind, running through the grass like fingers through hair.

_One last time._

_You have to let go._

A deep voice that could move mountains.

_This is bigger than you, brother._

_It’s not over. Hold fast. The storm is yet to come._

Brilliant blue.

_Amethar, no matter what—_

_Let go—_

_Keep going—_

Princess Jet Rocks wakes up.

It’s early; that gentle glow in between night and day filtering through her window in the wee hours of morning. Jet blinks the sleep out of her eyes—the light falls like liquid gold across the sheets, oranges and pinks pooling by the horizon like honey as the darkness of the night retreats.

She yawns, kicks her leg out to nudge her sister awake. “Ruby. Look—it’s sunrise.”

Ruby mutters under her breath, eyes slowly opening. “Huh?”

Jet trundles over to Ruby’s hammock and rocks it teasingly. “Let’s go and watch it. We haven’t seen it since before—well, before everything.”

Ruby groans at her sister’s early morning enthusiasm, but cracks one eye open. Jet sticks out her tongue in response.

Ruby smirks, and then her eyes widen in awe as she looks over to the window. “Okay, okay. Let me get my jacket.”

They head out onto the deck, still a little chilly from the night air, and sit side by side at the very front of the ship, legs dangling out onto the rushing Cola below. Jet holds her pinky out, and Ruby links hers with it.

“Relieved to be home?” Ruby asks. The colours of the sunrise paint her skin orange.

“A bit,” Jet says, breathing in the crisp morning air. “When we get back home, we’ll have to figure out what to do again. I think we were lucky to be runaways, you know? We just had to survive.”

Ruby makes a face.

Jet smiles, looking down to where the bow of the ship carves its determined way through the sparkling river. “Is it weird I’m not as scared as I should be? I feel like I’ve been waiting for a moment like this to prove myself.” She cringes. “I know that’s selfish; we’re at war. But I get why people want the throne now. The power to change things.”

“You’ve never wanted to be Queen before,” Ruby says, softly.

“No. I haven’t,” Jet says, and watches as the last curve of the sun reluctantly lets go of the horizon, like leaving a lover’s embrace. “But I think I finally do.”

That’s the thing, she thinks, as their journey ends and she steps off the ship and into Dulcington—she’s been through so much these past few weeks, but she doesn’t look different. She feels different.

Theo announces their return formally, and Jet grins. She _is_ different—she’s gone from Princess to Bastard, and she wants to make sure people know it. She’s Bastard Jet Rocks of Candia, and she will hold all her scars with pride.

Well, Jet gulps as the looming silhouette of Castle Candy approaches, with as much pride as she can when facing down her mother.

Queen Caramelinda runs outs, night dress and silk bonnet still around her hair, and Jet finds her mouth open to defend herself before she’s swept into a crushing hug, trembling arms around her head and toffee tears staining her sleeve.

“We’re not in trouble?” Jet says, bewildered.

“I really thought we were gonna be in trouble,” Ruby whispers.

“My sweethearts, my darlings. You’re okay. I’m so happy you’re alive, and you did nothing wrong,” Caramelinda says.

“We actually did a lot of things right,” Jet replies, hugging her mother back.

Caramelinda smiles at them. “Theo? Get the princesses and get Prince Liam inside as fast as you can, alright?”

And then Calroy runs out, brand-new pants and all, and gives her father a hug. His face falls as he regards the group, looking for a missing someone. 

“And where is the Chancellor?”

Jet steps forward, clearing her throat. A composure falls onto her, and she takes a breath and says, “The Chancellor sacrificed himself to save Prince Liam and the rest of us. It was a beautiful moment of heroism.”

Her mother looks at her as she does so, scrutinising. Jet cannot decipher the emotion on her face—pride, guilt, sorrow—she doesn’t know. Self-conscious, she stands her ground. Liam is not the only person who’s changed in the past few weeks.

“Theo,” she calls, “let’s get the girls fed and safe in the castle at once. Let’s get Liam with them as well—”

Jet bristles. “Mom, you don’t have to protect us anymore. We’re war guys too.”

Something in her mother’s expression cracks. “No one in this castle who is my progeny or nephew is going to be a war anything! You are going to be in the castle, safe.”

Ruby rolls her eyes, turning to stalk away, but Jet steps closer. “Mom, I don’t think you understand. We’ve proven ourselves in battle and we don’t need to do this!”

“Enough!” Mom says, and she slams her heel into the ground—instantly Jet feels the ground beneath her give as her legs are sucked into the deep brown muck of hot caramel. She looks up at her in shock; her mother’s never done magic at this scale in front of them. Her eyes are hard, and Jet thinks that there is still so much about her mother she does not know.

Ruby gasps, caught in the act of trying to run and tripping straight into the ground. She looks up. “Can you teach me how to do that?”

“Oh, you want to learn something?”

“Yes—”

“Then go get washed and dressed, eat your supper, do your lessons, and then I’ll teach you how to do that,” Mom says, and there is exhaustion in her voice. “War’s coming. It’s time to stop fooling around.”

Jet meets her mother’s eyes. Queen Caramelinda Rocks looks back, pleading and commanding all at once. 

Frustration makes her fist clench. She’s _changed_ —she’s not the same woman who left Candia three weeks ago, and no one is willing to treat her differently. 

But she listens, marching up towards the castle.

——————————

Ruby nudges Jet’s shoulder as they’re walking to supper, and points across the corridor.

Mom is coming out of her study. The door swings open—there’s a flash of something on her mother’s private desk, a something that is bright and risque, and Ruby gasps. She gives Jet a familiar look, and Jet knows it instantly as the one that will end in hijinks. She grins back; she’s missed this.

Ruby creeps towards the door, taking her theives’ tools out of her pocket and making quick work of the lock.

There’s a letter lying on top of Mom’s desk, just waiting for them to find. It’s calligraphy that Jet recognises—the symbol in front of Lazi Fierce Lingerie’s store, in Dulcington, and she gives Ruby a wide-eyed look of anticipation. 

She reads it, feeling her heart-rate spike; Lazi Fierce has been a spy for her mother, she has something secret in the attic of her shop for them to claim. Ruby looks at her, and Jet knows what she’s going to say before she even says it.

“We are going to get in so much trouble,” Jet objects, even as she wants desperately to go. “There is literally war going on.”

“Jet, we can’t worry about getting in trouble, there’s war going on,” Ruby says, and grabs her hand, running out of the room, and Jet lets her, laughing alongside.

They drag Liam along with them, and dash across the fields to where the town of Dulcington sleeps, gentle and oblivious. 

It feels oh so familiar, Jet thinks, as they run through the empty streets. It feels like nothing has changed, as mischief fuels her every step—everything is okay. It’s back to normal.

Ruby picks the front lock of the lingerie store, and the wood creaks as they let themselves in, climbing up the stairs towards the attic. The door opens easily.

The first thing Jet notices is that it’s pitch dark, except for the moonlight coming in from the small windows at the back of the attic. The second is a correction; there’s another source of light, a chest at the back of the room that pulses with a tiny golden glow. 

Liam gasps, runs forward—

A great many things happen at once.

Something stirs in the darkness, and Jet jumps as she hears the thudding shots of Liam’s crossbow, three rapid-fire bolts that land in someone or something in the room. There’s a moment of panic as the realisation settles and Jet draws her sword— _danger danger danger—_

And then there’s a stab of blinding pain in her gut, another bolt of pain in her shoulder—the sound of Ruby crying out—

Jet doesn’t realise she’s swung her sword until she hears a man cry out, until the sharp tang of sourdough flesh reaches her nose. Doesn’t realise she’s bleeding until she can feel her blood pooling on the floor.

On the floor, why is she on the floor—

It was an ambush. It was an ambush, she’s messed up, Ruby’s in danger—oh, god, _Ruby’s in danger—_

The water-steel dagger in her gut sends her into a spasm; because that’s what it is, Jet realises, as she feels the excruciating pain and the poison run through her veins, so strong that she can barely focus on the simple act of breathing in and out.

At the edge of her vision, Ruby is on her knees, clutching her stomach as she bleeds from a water-steel wound in her gut, eyes darting back and forth as she looks at Jet and tries to figure out what’s happening and what to do.

“Run!” Jet cries, struggling through the agony in her chest. 

Ruby locks eyes with her, terrified. There’s a weak sob, and then she disappears from sight under her own magic, and there’s the sound of thudding footsteps as she flees.

Jet tries not to cry out in pain as Liam jostles her, drags her into—somewhere, somewhere darker and quieter, and Jet realises with nausea that she recognises Senator Ciabatta’s voice—

And then it’s finally quiet. Still but for her pained gasps, anyway. Jet just tries to focus on taking deep breaths, to not think about the pain in her chest.

There’s still light.

The locket on her chest is pulsing gently, warmly, with the tiniest pink glow. It takes all Jet’s energy to move her hand up to clutch it, but she does.

The thought comes to her calmly: she’s dying.

It is not the glorious warrior’s death she wanted, bleeding out in the attic of a lingerie shop. Jet finds that she doesn’t care.

Ruby is safe. She got away—Jet can feel her pulsing in the tiny locket around her chest.

Dying hurts, Jet thinks, as she clutches her twin sister’s locket, as Liam squeezes her other hand and tries and fails to stem the bleeding in her gut, to stop the water corroding her body—it hurts.

“Tell Ruby I love her,” she gasps, as she squeezes Liam’s hand as hard as she can. “And tell her she did the right thing.”

It hurts—

And then Jet doesn’t feel anything anymore.

Jet wakes up.

She gulps a huge rasping breath, jerking into motion as she rolls out of the hammock and lands with a thump against the ground. 

It’s early. It’s bright. The light falls like liquid gold across the sheets, oranges and pinks pooling by the horizon like honey.

Jet stumbles off the ground, clutching at her stomach—there’s nothing there, no blood, no dagger. Her heart locket is resting on her chest, clean and unbloody. 

“Jet?” Ruby groans, rolling around in her hammock and rubbing her eyes as she wakes, “Y’okay?”

Jet opens and closes her mouth like a fish.

She’s alive. Someone came back for her—but that doesn’t make sense. There’s no evidence anything last night happened. She lifts her shirt; none of the scars or wounds that would result even from healing magic as powerful enough as to save her. She runs to the window; they’re on the stretch of the Cola just before Castle Candy.

A dream? No. No, no, no, that was real. She knows it was. And this sunrise—she knows it too.

Somehow, she’s died and gone back in time.

“Ruby,” she says, hysterically, “Something’s going on.”

——————————

“That’s—impossible,” Ruby says.

Jet clutches at her head. “I know! I know it is, but it happened. Trust me.”

Jet holds up her pinky, calling on their bond, and Ruby clutches it with her own without hesitation.

“I trust you, of course I do—but _how?_ ”

They’re watching the sunrise again, feet dangling off the bow of the ship, as Jet explains everything to her sister. “Do you think it’s Lazuli’s visions? Like you get?”

“None of my visions have ever been like what you’re describing. Nothing about this feels like normal magic.”

“I can prove it when we get there tonight—someone set a trap for us. Or for Mom, I don’t know. God. I _died_ , Rubes. I could feel myself dying.”

Ruby’s pinky tightens around Jet’s. After a moment she asks, “What does it feel like? Dying?”

“It hurts,” Jet says, laughing uncomfortably, trying not to think about the pain in her gut, the tears streaming down Liam’s face as he struggled to save her. “Really fucking hurts.”

“Why don’t I remember any of this?” There’s a guilty look on Ruby’s face. And then, quietly, “Did I really run?”

“Only because I told you to,” Jet says, fiercely. “You didn’t do anything wrong. If you’d stayed and fought, you would’ve died.”

“Like you did,” Ruby says, angry.

“I didn’t want to die, Ruby. I would’ve run too,” Jet says.

“Okay,” Ruby says, breaking eye contact, lifting her legs up and clutching them around her chest, and Jet knows she’s not convinced. “Okay. God. I hate when Mom’s right. She’s going to be so mad when we get home.”

——————————

She and Ruby watch her mother leave her private study, her eyes still red from whatever awful conversation she’d had with Pops. They sneak in, door clicking shut behind them.

Ruby picks up the letter. “So this is a trap?” she says, looking down at the handwriting of the supposed Lazi Fierce from Lazi Fierce’s Lingerie.

“Has to be. There were at least three Ceresian assassins with water-steel,” Jet says. “We should ask Mom.”

Ruby makes a face. “And get in trouble for rifling through her study? No way. Let’s get Pops.”

They run out of the study and towards their parents’ bedchambers. Jet is thrown by how familiar it feels to be running in the castle—she feels like months have passed since they’ve last been here, and not just a couple of weeks. 

And then they turn the corner and run directly into Sir Theo.

“Girls, what are you doing—“

“Hi, Theo,” Jet calls, moving to run around him. “Bye, Theo.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Theo says, and grabs them both by their collars like scruffy kittens. Jet flails as she’s pulled back.

“Hey!” Ruby shouts.

“Look, your mother told me to keep an eye on you. What are you doing, running in the castle?“

Jet and Ruby look at each other, having a silent conversation.

Ruby concedes, rolling her eyes. “He’s not going to believe us.”

“Theo,” Jet says, pushing on, “I need to tell you something crazy, and you need to believe me.”

Theo raises his eyebrow, but lets go of them.

“I’ve lived today out before,” Jet says, words tripping out of her mouth as fast as she can. “Yesterday, we snuck into Mom’s study, and saw this note about a spy she’d left in Dulcington. Only it was a trap, and we went, and I died, and then I woke up this morning like nothing had happened so now I need to tell Pops about this note!”

A beat. Theo blinks, and then says, “Look, I will give you girls points for creativity, but this is your flimsiest excuse yet—”

Ruby groans. “I told you he wouldn’t believe us.”

Jet gestures outside. “If you come with us to the store, we’ll prove it to you—”

“ _We_ are not going anywhere!” Theo commands. “The Queen has ordered me to keep you in the castle, safe.”

Jet gestures, explaining it to Theo one more time. “But someone set a trap in Dulcington. There’s nothing in the attic, except Ceresian assassins. _Trust_ me.”

“All the more reason for you to stay here!”

“What, and you don’t want to find out who planned this?” Ruby says. 

Theo rubs his temples, thinking. “Look, if you’re right, then I’ll go, and you girls can stay here, where it’s safe.”

“Do you even know where Lazi Fierce’s Lingerie is?” Jet says, deadpan.

“Of course he doesn’t,” Ruby hisses. “You think Theo owns lingerie?”

Theo squawks his dissent. “Maybe I do! You wouldn’t know.”

Jet and Ruby make gagging noises. “And we’re gonna keep it that way,” Jet says. “Ew, Theo.”

“Look, girls.” Theo sighs, thinking. “If you’re really telling the truth, it means we have enemies inside the castle. Where did the queen get this?”

“I… don’t know,” Jet says, horror rising like bile as she realises. 

Ruby balks. “Did someone betray us?”

Theo straightens up, all business. “Look, under no circumstances will you go to the lingerie store. You three, go to supper and ask your mother who gave her this letter. I’m going to get your father and muster up some troops, just in case.” He looks at them, worry creased in all his features. “We’ll figure it out, okay?”

They nod.

Queen Caramelinda is standing by the banquet hall, waiting for them. Liam sits next to her, a little awkward, and he shoots them a look of relief when they arrive. Their mother looks sternly at them as they approach. “Girls, where have you been? Supper’s been ready for a while now.”

“Mom,” Jet stammers, a little out of breath from the run, and then holds the note up to her. “Where did you get this?”

Her mother frowns, a moment passing as she realises what it is Jet’s holding, and then her eyes widen in shock. Liam jerks up, curious. “Where did _you_ get this? Why were you rifling around my study!?”

Jet winces. 

“Look,” Ruby says, “we just, you know, saw some lingerie in your study, and wanted to figure out what’s up, like if you were maybe getting some revenge booty on Dad—”

“You _what_?” Mom says, blush riding high on her cheeks and across her ears, “What I do with Amanda is _none of your business_ —”

“Amanda?” Jet’s mind screeches to a halt, and Ruby lets out a giggle. “You’ve been going at it with Sir Maillard!?”

Her mother snatches the note out of Jet’s hand, straightening up and adjusting her dress. “Enough! It’s none of your business, and anyway, I found this on my desk atop my letters just tonight and dismissed it before I read it. A letter from a lingerie store is hardly my top priority right now.”

“So you don’t know who Lazi Fierce is?” Ruby asks. “She’s not a spy working for you?”

“A spy—why would I put a spy in a lingerie store?”

“I mean, if you’re into that—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Liam,” Ruby yelps.

“Look, someone planted this letter in your study, Mom,” Jet says, shaking her head and getting them back on track. “It’s a trap. There are Ceresian assassins waiting in Dulcington.”

Mom frowns, drawing her brows together. “How do you know that?”

Jet makes a guilty face, waving her hand non-committally, “It’s a long story.”

“You _went_!?” Mom asks, anger blooming on her face, “I told you three not to leave the castle! This is war, Jet! It’s not the time or place to be mucking around, you could’ve been killed—”

“I _was_ killed, Mom!” Jet blurts. 

Her face drops in shock. “What?”

Jet sighs, fidgeting with her hands as she explains. “I think—it’s magic or something. I’ve woken up on this day before. We snuck out, and you were right, okay! You were right, and it was an ambush, and I _died_ —” 

Jet’s tearing up, and she hates it, she hates it when she cries. She swallows. “But then I woke up this morning, completely fine, like time had reset. Like magic.”

Ruby reaches out and links a pinky with Jet. Jet blinks back her tears.

“What do you mean—magic?” Mom asks, softly. 

Jet shrugs. “I don’t know. It feels like magic. I don’t know why it’s happening to me.”

She’s expecting another lecture. She’s expecting Mom to panic and rage and lock her in a room with nothing but food and water, but her mother just says, “Okay.”

Jet looks up, surprised. “Okay?”

“Okay. I believe you.” Her mother opens the letter and starts to study it. “I don’t know what’s happening here, but. We’ll figure it out. What matters is that you children are safe.”

She sighs, and then pulls them in close, Liam included. “You’re all okay?”

Jet hugs her back, tight. “Yeah,” Ruby says for her. “We are.”

Mom pulls away, and then gestures for them to sit. They take a moment for Jet to properly explain, to cover everything they know.

Her mother rests her chin on her hand, thinking. “This letter could’ve been put onto my desk by anyone in the castle, honestly. You said there were Ceresian assassins?”

“Four of them,” Jet nods. “One of them was Senator Ciabatta.”

Mom sucks in a breath. “ _Imperator_ Ciabatta, now,” she corrects. “A letter went out a couple days ago. How did he get as close as Dulcington without us realising?”

“Has to be an inside job, right?” Liam says. “Who betrayed us?”

“If our enemies are in the castle,” her mother says, “we need to flush them out.”

Ruby worries at her sleeves. “Theo said he’d meet us here with Pops—where is he?”

Liam perks up, suddenly. “Can you hear that?”

There’s the sound of marching footsteps and the clanking of armour coming down the corridor, outside the banquet hall. 

Ruby jumps up and runs to the door. “That has to be them!”

Mom’s eyes widen, grabbing after Ruby too late. “Wait, Ruby—”

Ruby opens the door, and Jet watches in horror as a sword plunges through her chest, erupting from her back stained in bright pink blood. It pulls out with a spurt, and she gasps, collapsing to the ground. 

Jet screams, running forward. Mom cries out, Liam charges, crossbow already up and firing, and the door swings open fully to reveal Muffinfield soldiers, expressions blank and determined, charging into the room. 

Jet draws her sword, fending back the soldiers trying to enter the room, standing over her sister’s prone body as it bleeds out onto the carpet below her. Ruby tries to crawl back, spitting blood from her mouth. Her hands glow, and fog stutters out slowly, her Candian magic sparking into action.

Jet parries another blow, swings forward and skewers the soldier in front of her—and is forced back as another takes its place, shields up and impenetrable. There are too many of them. The fog can only hide them so much in a closed room. The danger, the trap—it’s so, so much deeper than she expected. There’s so much going on that she doesn’t know.

A dozen more soldiers flood the room, and Jet curses as another arrow hits her leg and makes her stumble. Her mother cries out as something hits her—there’s blue vines of her magic everywhere, ground turning to caramel around them. Liam’s crossbow falls from his hands.

A sudden jolt at the back of her neck, her breathing halts as she’s suddenly choking on her own blood—

Jet wakes up.

She falls to the ground again, gasping, clutching her throat. The arrow is gone. She looks up.

It’s early; that gentle glow in between night and day filtering through her window in the wee hours of morning. Someone’s giving her more time—to do what, she doesn’t know.

Muffinfield soldiers. They were betrayed.

She curses, runs to Ruby, and wakes her up to face the sunrise again.

——————————

“So… Calroy’s a traitor?”

“I don’t know,” Jet says. The salty morning air is sharp as she breathes it in. “I didn’t see him in the fight—he’s been with us for ages, you know? I don’t know if his soldiers just betrayed him, or if they were enemies disguised as Muffinfield soldiers…”

She sighs, leans back until she’s lying face-up on the ship. “I don’t know anything, Ruby.”

Ruby holds her pinky out, links it with Jet’s. “We’ll figure it out, okay?”

“Okay,” Jet says, remembering the image of Ruby bleeding out on the ground. “Okay.”

This time, after they take the note from Caramelinda’s office, they make their way to their parents’ bedchambers instead, hoping to find their father. They cut through the castle, climbing the spiral staircases that bring them to their parents’ chambers. It’s empty.

“Shit,” Jet says. “Where’s Pops?”

Ruby frowns, “I don’t know.” She runs out to the window, scanning the walls beneath them, the horizon. Her face grows panicked. “Jet, look. There are Ceresian tents in the fields. We need to find Theo.”

“I’ll find Pops, you look for Theo,” Jet orders. They link their pinkies and squeeze for a second, and then they split, running out down the halls.

Jet tries not to flinch at every Muffinfield soldier that she passes, marching on patrol or guarding the entrances. They eye her, but don’t attack. Not yet, anyway. She runs through the castle as silent as she can, down to the garrisons in the keep, then all the way back up to the Upper Wing and the tower watch. Her footsteps barely make a noise as she sprints, flying across the candy-stone floors.

It’s when she reaches the parapets that she hears Calroy’s voice.

“…I wonder if they’ll still call you Amethar the Unfallen after this. Here’s to a future you can’t ruin.”

Jet stifles a gasp, runs even faster around the corner—

Her father falls from the parapets, Calroy standing behind him at the edge of the parapets, a deep cruelty she has never seen before alight on his face. Jet lets out a scream, runs to the edge, arms reaching out far too late as her father falls and falls beyond her grasp.

“Jet?” Calroy says, in shock, blood still on his hands. “What are you—You’re not meant to be here—”

There is a furious grief that overcomes Jet, and without thinking she grabs Flickerish and charges at Calroy, her dad’s best friend, who taught her how to use a sword, how to pick locks, how to use half the secret passages of Castle Candy—

She hadn’t wanted to believe it.

“You! You were behind _everything_ —” Calroy draws his sword to parry her blows, stepping back under her onslaught, and Jet does her best to blink away the furious tears that sting her eyes. 

“What did you do to him—what did you do, what did you _do_ —” She’s crying. She’s crying, and she doesn’t know if Calroy can even hear the words she’s saying over her sobs.

Calroy doesn’t respond, speechless. He’s not even attacking, just blocking, just moving back step by step as Jet strikes him with all she’s got, every move he taught her, every advantage she has—

Calroy’s face hardens, shock finally leaving his face, and he twists his blade. Jet lets out a gasp as the length of her sword jerks, the bendy blade of Flickerish catching around Calroy’s foil and getting pulled out of her grasp and flung to the ground in one solid move. Calroy moves back for a final strike, Jet flinches back—

And then he pauses suddenly, hands trembling as he holds the sword to her neck. He’s breathing heavily. 

“Kill me, then,” Jet snarls. “Kill me, and I’ll be back to haunt your ass, bitch.”

There’s an indecipherable expression on Calroy’s face, and then the sword moves forward, and Jet feels an excruciating bolt of pain as her throat is slit—

Jet wakes up.

She coughs, and rubs her throat; it still aches with a phantom pain. Jet stumbles out of the hammock, heaving in breaths as angry tears prick at her eyes.

It’s early. It’s sunrise again. She’s okay. Dad is okay. They’re back.

“Jet?” Ruby groans, half-asleep.

She feels like her mouth has been glued shut, unable to speak without all her anger spilling out, but she nods, wiping away tears.

Ruby, fully awake now, jerks out of her hammock, coming to sit next to her. “Jet, what happened?”

“I’m fine, Ruby,” Jet says, forcing it out. “It’s a long story.”

She explains it to Ruby as they sit watching the sunset for the fourth time. Despite everything, it’s still as beautiful as it was on that first morning, and Jet combats the feeling of betrayal by watching the colours move in the sky like strokes of paint, staining the river below with red and gold.

“But—he taught you how to use a sword,” Ruby says, forlorn.

“I know,” Jet says, and then sighs. The repetitions are beginning to get to her. “I don’t understand. Something out there keeps giving me extra chances, and I don’t know why.”

Ruby shrugs, hugging her knees to her chest. “Well, you might as well use them.” She smiles. “You’re basically immortal, now.”

“Only for this one day,” Jet says, rolling her eyes. “I’m getting tired explaining all of this over and over.”

“I’m a good listener though, right?” Ruby says, grinning.

Jet makes a vague sound, and then lets out a burst of laughter as Ruby elbows her, hard.

——————————

Ruby spends the rest of the morning performing on the ship bulwarks, and Jet sits on the railing next to Ruby, swinging her legs back and forth anxiously. Noon comes by, and finally her father wakes up. Jet runs over to him immediately, hugging him tightly.

“Jet?” Pops laughs, “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Just missed you.”

“Y’sure?”

Jet bites her lip. “Well. I need to tell you something.”

Pops raises his eyebrow. At that point, Theo charges out from below deck, Sprinkle jumping into his face, and the both of them stumble back.

“Woah, Theo.”

“Sorry, your majesty, Sprinkle doesn’t take kindly to the dairy foods onboard,” Theo says, lowering his head sheepishly. 

Jet giggles. “Okay, well, now that you’re here, Theo, I can tell both of you. And it’s going to sound crazy, so you have to promise to believe me.”

“I promise,” Pops says, as easily as breathing. Jet wants to hug him again, but she stops herself, staying on track. Ruby flips off the bulwarks out of the corner of her eye, making her way over. Jet waits until she’s behind her to speak.

“Calroy’s a traitor.” The words fall like anchors into the ground.

Her father balks. “What?”

“He betrayed us, Dad.”

“He’s been my best friend for years, Jet,” he says, laughing it off.

But Theo puts a hand on her father’s shoulder, a sudden solemness overtaking him. Jet can see the gears in his head turning. “…How do you know?”

She sighs, and begins to explain.

———————————

A war council and ship docking later, Jet and Ruby are running through the castle, trying to find their father. He’s keeping Calroy distracted as Theo, Cumulous, and Manta Ray try to find the Knights Gumbar and bring in Manta Ray’s crew.

Jet breathes heavily, sprinting her way up the stairs with her sister as they make their way to the parapets. If she remembers right, they’ll be just around the corner—

Her father and Calroy’s figures stand up ahead, and Jet ducks behind some potted cotton candy, holding her arm out just in time to grab Ruby and do the same. The leaves rustle as they skid to a halt.

Calroy stops walking. He turns his head, listening carefully.

Shit, Jet thinks, and clutches Ruby tighter, trying not to move.

Amethar tries to pull Calroy’s attention back on him, but Jet watches as Calroy slowly turns, flexing his hand. He smiles at Amethar amicably, and then he reaches behind his back and unsheathes his water-steel dagger.

“No,” Jet says, blood turning to ice as Calroy plunges the dagger into Amethar’s chest.

“Pops!” Ruby cries, and Calroy spins, sneering, and catches sight of them. Ruby bolts into action, drawing her bow as their father collapses, but Calroy drops to the ground, lightning-fast, and her arrow goes wide.

“Ruby?” Calroy saysas he recovers. “Jet? How did you—”

Ruby nocks another arrow, but Calroy draws a knife, throwing it forward faster than she can see. Jet tackles Ruby to the ground, lets out a sigh of relief as the knife embeds itself into the brick above her. She stands quickly as Calroy draws back his sword, and Jet brings hers up just in time to meet it with an ugly clash. 

Tutor and student fight, blades moving faster than the eye can see. Out of the corner of her eye Jet sees Ruby try to take aim with her bow again, but Calroy smiles grimly and doesn’t flinch, knowing that she can’t fire lest she hit Jet. 

Jet forces herself not to despair at the sight of her father’s paralysed form on the ground. Breathe. In, out, stay focussed, strike with precision and keep your feet steady.

It’s like every time she has ever sparred with Calroy, and not. She’s driving him back one step at a time, Flickerish giving her an advantage she’d never had against him before. She forces him back, and Calroy grimaces as his feet hit her father’s body behind him, pressed up against the wall—

His eyes flash, and it’s the only warning Jet has before he pulls back from the fight, reaches down to pull the water-steel dagger from her father’s back, and throw it at her. 

It’s half-corroded, bloody and fractured, and Jet only just has the time to throw herself to the side to dodge it—

He wasn’t aiming for her. 

Ruby lets out a cry as she falls.

No, Jet thinks, head swivelling from her position on the floor, urging her feet to get up beneath her.

She cries out to Ruby, and then Calroy has a sword at her throat, standing above her. Jet widens her eyes, waiting for the killing blow—Calroy hesitates. His hands are trembling.

Jet snarls, grabs the blade of the foil in her hand and yanks it back, not caring as blood spurts and it scores a deep gash across her palm. Calroy’s eyes widen, and she leaps from the ground and tackles him, trying to drag him back across the parapets away from where she just saw Ruby fall—

Towards where her father lies, prone—

Jet lets out a furious scream, dragging Calroy against the wall, whipping the point of Flickerish at Calroy as he parries desperately. What she lacks in technique she makes up for in sheer ferocity, her blade flashing in and out as she pushes Calroy back—

“Why?” she cries, asking with every lash of her blade. “Why, why, why—”

The blade finally hits its mark, digging into the flesh of Calroy’s shoulder. He snarls, eyes flashing and hand clutching at her blade as it drives deeper into him, and says, “Is there an answer that would satisfy you, your highness?”

Jet sobs, whipping the blade back and sends it forward one more time, stabbing Calroy through the heart. 

He falls, eyes blown wide. 

Jet gasps, letting go of the sword and crumpling. She brings a hand to her mouth, tears her eyes away from Calroy bleeding out on the ground. Distantly, she can hear the sounds of footsteps, soldiers drawn by her commotion. She can’t find it in herself to care. She drags herself to her feet, running towards Ruby on the ground.

“Jet,” Ruby rasps, grabbing at Jet’s hand. “Did you kill him?”

Jet nods, tears of relief pricking at her eyes. Ruby’s hurt, but not dead—the water-steel was heavily eroded, and hadn’t paralysed her.

Jet pulls Ruby to her feet. “Can you walk?” 

Ruby nods, and does so. Jet runs to her father’s body on the ground, lets a cry of joy when she finds he’s still breathing. Paralysed, but still breathing. With Ruby and her magic, they manage to lift him up and head towards their planned exit. It’s slow progress, Ruby still staggering from her injuries and Pops barely able to speak let alone walk.

They turn the last corner—and Jet’s stomach drops. There’s an entire corridor of Muffinfield soldiers standing between them and freedom. 

“Ruby,” Jet says. “Get Dad, and run. I’ll hold them off.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Ruby says, fiercely.

“You’re not. There’s another shortcut through the cellar, small enough to bottleneck them and give me a chance.” She isn’t lying, but the both of them know how unlikely that is. Beyond the castle, Jet can see Ceresian troops mustering, can hear the sound of Muffinfield soldiers approach. “Just get a headstart, okay? You need it more than I do.”

An arrow thuds into the brick next to her. Jet ducks, pushing Ruby. “Go, Ruby!”

They turn, running back down the way they came, and then slide into a nearby room. Jet shoves at the cabinet until it topples, revealing the tunnel in the brick, and Ruby and Amethar stumble their way in.

“Go!” Jet says, again, and then stands to face the soldiers pummelling at the doorway. She doesn’t look back.

She fights, and fights, and fights—

Jet wakes up.

She coughs, groaning. Her wounds are gone, there is no blood on her hands. Jet stumbles out of the hammock, slamming her fist into the ground with frustration.

It’s early, the sunrise just beginning to douse their room in pink and gold.

She’d been so close that time. She’d—she’d killed Calroy. Gotten her revenge. Ruby and Pops had made it out.

“Jet?” Ruby groans, “Y’okay?”

Jet nods, moving forward to hug her. Ruby hugs back. 

They watch the sunrise, again. Jet explains, again.

“You really killed him?” Ruby says, incredulous.

Jet nods. “Even if he _is_ okay now—I couldn’t stop myself. He killed Pops, Ruby.” She looks down at her hands, remembers the pressure of Flickerish in Calroy’s chest. She furrows her brow. “Is it weird to say that it didn’t feel as good as I thought it would?”

Ruby looks at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Jet says, words coming to her with a viciousness, “that even after watching him throw Dad over the balustrade, poison you with water-steel, even after knowing he was behind every assassination attempt—”

Jet sighs. “It only felt good in the moment, you know? And then after… I just had blood on my hands.”

“Do you regret it?” Ruby asks, softly.

“No,” Jet says, firm. “No. He deserved it. It just—didn’t help _me_ as much as I hoped it would.”

Ruby hums, holding out her pinkie in acknowledgement. Jet squeezes it.

The sunrise is beautiful.

Jet reaches the castle. This time, she brings Theo and Cumulous down with her to the lingerie store, trying to get them to believe her—

She fails. Ciabatta drives his Ceresian gladius into Cumulous’ chest, Theo collapses under the poison of water-steel, Liam bleeds out in front of her—

Jet wakes up.

She groans, rolls over, and tumbles to the ground.

Again.

She bleeds out, and the light in her locket fades, and the pain of water-steel bites into her with every breath she takes—

Jet wakes up.

She stumbles, falling out of her hammock for the hundredth time, or so it feels.

She wants to give up.

She can’t, she can’t, she can’t—

Jet Rocks takes the deepest breath she can, and wakes Ruby up, getting ready to explain her situation again.

There has to be something she hasn’t tried, she refuses to _stop trying—_

——————————

Cumulous meditates, and the Sugarplum Fairy appears at her grove, hovering strangely in the curling fog, figure thin and grotesque. 

Jet runs forward, desperate. “Help me, please. Is this you? Can you stop this?”

There’s a moment of silence, and then the Sugarplum Fairy smiles. “Jet Rocks,” she greets, and her voice sounds like the scraping of broken glass. “Is that how you greet a goddess?”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just—please help me. I knew Lapin—”

“Ah. My dear bunny.” She winks at Jet, one eye on the left side of her face flicking down and back up again in an eerie motion. The human gesture looks alien on her. “Perhaps I will hear you out on his behalf, then?”

Jet nods. “You know what’s happening, right? This, this is magic? _You’re_ why I keep waking up in the same day?”

The Sugarplum Fairy nods. “Yes, and no. You are right, this timeloop is of Candian magic, but you are wrong in thinking that I am in charge of it—I am but one god of the Sweetening Path.”

“Then how do I get out of this?” Jet says, desperate.

The fairy giggles. “You are not the first to ask that of me.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—this is bigger than you,” she trills. “You can’t stop it. You were lucky enough to have been given this chance.”

“This chance to _what_? I die in every single loop!”

The Sugarplum Fairy smiles. “Oh, is dying really so scary, Jet Rocks? You’ll be free, and safe with me.”

“It’s not death I’m afraid of,” Jet says, firm.

The Sugarplum Fairy hums, an edge of bitterness to her tone. “I’m sure.”

And then she’s gone, and Jet kicks at the ground, tired of half-answers.

Jet wakes up. 

Calroy kills her father. Jet dies in the attic of a lingerie store. Sometimes she kills him, sometimes he kills her. She never, ever survives. 

She wakes up and wakes up and wakes up—Jet grits her teeth.

She gets closer every time.

There are things working far beyond everything she’s ever known to take her down, and she feels so stupid and small and helpless against it. It’s the same feeling that overcame her when she was fighting for her life in the cathedral, so small against the looming architecture above her, the carved stone of the Pontifex’s face as she condemned them to death. Facing her father’s own surrender, his defeated voice, begging him to live—

She’d never wanted to feel like this ever again.

Liam holds her hand in the darkness, but she has never felt so alone, and small, and weak, as the light in her locket fades.

“Jet?” Ruby groans, waking up, “Y’okay?”

“Ruby,” Jet gasps, “I failed. I failed. I keep failing—”

Jet wakes up.

She takes a shaky breath, willpower fading. She doesn’t know what this loop wants from her—she will never choose to let Ruby die. If she has to die for Ruby to live, she will make that choice every time, and no god or uncaring universe can take that away from her.

Jet and her mother stand at the secret exit in the cellar, anxiously waiting for Ruby and Liam to find Pops. She’s tried this plan before, a plan where they sneak out long before the coup begins—it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, but Jet needs to try it again, needs to try everything again in the hopes she might find the one that will let her survive.

Her mother rests a hand on Jet’s shoulder, knowingly. “How are you faring?”

Jet swallows. “I’m fine,” she says, determined.

Mom looks at her skeptically. “What loop is it now?” 

“Twenty-nine.”

Her mother lets out a sigh, uncertain in the face of Jet’s staunchness.

“This was _all_ my fault, you know?” Jet blurts suddenly, looking away as she’s unable to stop the tears. “I said we should sneak out, I got myself killed, and I know you’re just going to say ‘ _I told you so’_ , because you were right! You were right, I was _trying_ to act so _queenly_ when I was just too naive—”

“Jet,” her mother interrupts, cupping Jet’s face in her hand. “Oh, Jet. _None_ of this is your fault.”

Jet sniffles, but doesn’t reply.

“I—” Her mother closes her eyes. Takes a breath. “I’m not—good, at this, Jet. I know I’ve been hard on you girls, and I know I expect so much of you. The truth is, I’m scared. I’m so, so scared of losing you. I’m harsh on you because I know that the world is cruel, and unkind, but—”

She sighs. “Listen to me, Jet, sweetheart. _None_ of this is your fault.”

Jet doesn’t say anything, but she nods. Suddenly, her mother pulls her into an embrace, reaching out and pulling her close, and Jet feels like she’s eight again, scraping her knee and crying into her mother’s dress.

They make it. 

Jet wakes up, and—

She wakes up, tells her father what she knows, and they never approach the castle. Cumulous sneaks in with Jet and Ruby, his speed and their stealth keeping them safe. They sneak Caramelinda out. They don’t even go near the Dulcington shops.

Jet survives the day.

She’s holding Ruby’s hand, unable to stop the smile on her face as she jumps onto the deck of the Bel Baby. There’s a sudden jolt as the ship rocks beneath them, and then they’re pushed off from the docks.

The realisation comes to her slowly. They’re _safe_. They’re alive. Jet can’t believe it.

“Jet, Ruby!” Her father calls, scooping her up in a big hug. She lets out a disbelieving laugh, still not letting go of Ruby’s hand. 

“What do we do now?” Her mother asks, her hand on Jet’s shoulder.

“We run,” Jet says. “Together.”

And then she stumbles, a sudden bolt of pain hitting her in the stomach as she falls to the ground.

She gasps, clutching herself and groaning. There’s blood on her hand when she takes it away, a dark stain spreading across the front of her shirt. 

Nothing’s hit her, it’s like the wound just opened up at her stomach—

“What?” she mumbles weakly, as her family runs towards her, calling her name. The stain grows and grows, and Jet grows dizzy, her vision blurring away—

Jet wakes up to purple mists and darkness.

She stands—but she doesn’t need to. She’s already standing. Beneath her feet is a nothingness, a deep dark that stretches far beyond her. There is nothing but mists, and when she moves, she cannot feel the air on her hand, as if she’s surrounded by nothing but emptiness.

She’s not scared, though. Time feels so frozen, so still, that even her heart refuses to race, her breathing refusing to quicken.

It’s silent.

“Hello?” She calls. There is not even an echo. “Is anyone there?”

Nothing. And then—

“Princess.”

“…Lapin?” Jet says, incredulous, as her old tutor tilts his head at her. “How are you—how are you here?”

She hasn’t seen him since his sacrifice at the Cathedral. Lapin Cadbury looks at her with a softness she doesn’t usually see from him. His eyes run weary and ragged, but his voice remains as haughty as ever, and there is a steeliness to his posture she recognises from battle—or, she thinks, whenever he had a particularly brutal pop quiz.

“Princess. I don’t have much time—”

“You’re dead. You’re dead, aren’t you—what’s going on—”

Lapin makes a displeased face, and Jet shuts her mouth on instinct; a teacher upset at their student’s interruption.

“Yes. I am dead. But the loop you are trapped in—its focus on memories and death and time, allowed me to break through, however briefly.”

“Well—Can you break me out?” Jet asks, hopeful.

Lapin looks at her sadly, shakes his head. “It’s not that simple. You’re… The magic that surrounds you is old and ancient and very, very potent. I myself don’t know how to stop it, Princess—I don’t think there is a way.”

Jet opens her mouth. Shuts it again. Notices how the edges of Lapin seem to blur and crack, like her eyes can’t quite focus on them, slipping right past like trying to hold Cola in her hands.

“You’re dead,” she says again. Lapin’s ear twitches in irritation. “Am I… am I dead too?”

Lapin looks at her sadly, and Jet knows the answer.

“How?” she asks, and hates that her voice cracks.

Lapin sighs. “It’s… complicated. I died, but I’m not yet quite _dead_. I’m caught in something in-between. I believe you’re in something similar. The same grief that traps me here, that holds tight and refuses to let go—it binds you here too.”

“Well, how do I get out of it? How do I stop this?”

“I don’t know if you can.”

“Then _why_ am I here?” Jet spits, throat hoarse. “To die? Over and over? As a lesson? I learnt my mistake when Ciabatta killed me the first time, Lapin, so screw this stupid magic.”

Jet immediately winces at her harsh tone, her dropping of Lapin’s title, and waits for the coming reprimand. 

To her surprise, her tutor grins. “Well said. I can’t say I enjoy its methods either. Still, there’s more to it.”

He sighs, and Jet can already see his edges start to waver in the mist. “Time—it isn’t a straight line, Jet. This loop is something bigger than just you. Someone else triggered it, but for you… It’s giving you more time. Another chance.”

“Another chance to what?” Jet says, lost, as Lapin’s voice begins to fade.

Lapin smiles. “A chance I did not get, Princess. A chance to say goodbye.”

And then there is nothing but purple mists and emptiness.

Jet wakes up.

The sunrise is filtering in through her window. It feels different; the gold of the light filtering as bright as the wheat of Ceresian fields. She looks down, touches the point on her stomach where a water-steel blade will meet.

“I can’t take it back, can I?” Jet whispers, softly.

She looks to where her sister is sleeping. Whatever happened in that first loop—all the rest had just been delaying the inevitable.

Or; not inevitable. There’s nothing about her death that was inevitable; she was eighteen, born into a world that did not offer her any mercy.

But it happened, anyway.

Another chance, Jet thinks, and then she sighs, feet tapping lightly across the room as she gently shakes her sister awake. She wants to spend her last day happy.

Her sister yawns, eyes blinking open. “Hey, Ruby. We should watch the sunrise,” Jet says, and smiles. “It’s beautiful.”

——————————

Jet laughs.

She links pinkies with Ruby, and she doesn’t let go. She takes her sister’s hand, and she climbs up onto the railing with her, and she balances on the very tip of her toes, nothing but the rocking ship beneath her and the wide open air at her arms.

She runs and she hollers into the bright rushing air, and she breathes like she’s trying to swallow the sky.

——————————

Her father wakes up, looking tired. He wanders over and leans on the bulwarks next to Jet, shaking and blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

He looks so, so tired.

Jet walks over to him. “Pops, hey—”

“Jet, look—”

Jet stops, giggling. ”You go,” Jet says.

“No, what did you want to say?”

Jet smiles sadly. “Just wanted to check if you were okay. You seem… tired.”

“I _feel_ tired,” her father says honestly, and sighs. “I’m scared, Jet. I keep—making these mistakes, and putting everyone I love in danger, and I’m so, so tired. I don’t know what to do.”

“You try again!” Jet says. “I know how it feels, but Dad, listen to me. You’re not alone. Don’t give up.”

Dad laughs, nodding. “I can’t believe I’m letting my own daughter reassure me. Isn’t it meant to be the other way round?”

Jet grins. “What can I say? I’m one of a kind.”

“Aw, get over here,” Pops says, holding his arms wide. Jet runs into his embrace, melting into his arms.

“Are _you_ okay?” he asks.

“Now I am,” Jet says honestly, squeezing him tight. They stand there for a moment, just enjoying each other’s warmth. Jet wonders if she will ever be able to memorise the feeling of one of her dad’s hugs.

She doesn’t know how to tell him what’s about to happen. She doesn’t think she can.

“Pops, remember what you said to me, in the carriage, after we’d just escaped the cathedral fight?” Jet asks. It had terrified her, how he had given up. She never wants to feel that way again, to have to convince her father that it was worth living. “Can you promise me to never say that again?”

“What?” her father says, shocked.

“Don’t—don’t ever say you think things would be better if you were gone. It’s not true,” Jet says, fiercely. “You have to promise not to give up like that ever again, okay? No matter what happens.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“Promise!”

Dad laughs weakly. “I promise.”

“And you have to promise to look after Ruby!” Jet demands. “I think she’ll lose herself in her grief if you don’t help her. Revenge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You’re all she’s got.”

“She’s got you too, you know,” Dad says, raising his eyebrows. “But I promise.”

“Good,” Jet says. And then, “Something’s about to happen, Dad.”

“What?” Dad asks, confused.

Jet turns to face him, tries to take him in under the sunlight for the last time. Losing her will break him, she thinks.

She can’t let that happen.

“Something’s about to happen, and you have to be strong enough. You have to let go.”

Her father stares, uncomprehending. “I—“

Jet takes a shuddering breath, burying her head in his chest again. She never wants to let go. She doesn’t know how to put into words the grief in her heart, the longing that aches in every bone for things to go back to the way it was. She doesn’t know how to put into words how much she will miss this.

So she says, “I love you so, so much, you know that? Thank you for everything.”

Her father squeezes her tight, warm and comforting. “I love you too, baby. I love you too.”

Jet feels him kiss the top of her head, and holds on tight and closes her eyes. Tears prick at her eyes, but she does not let them fall.

“You’ll be a great Queen one day, Jet,” Pops says. Her heart breaks.

Jet looks up at him and grins like she could swallow the sun. “I already am one.”

——————————

Jet’s feet fly across the cobblestone streets, linking pinkies with Ruby as they laugh, Liam alongside them. Dulcington is quiet as they run, as if the buildings themselves were giving them a moment’s peace.

Jet runs, and feels like she’s twelve again. She runs, wind in her hair, and feels like she’s fifteen. She feels like how she did on her eighteenth Saint’s Day, the morning before they found out they were going to Comida, the moment before all of this happened, and she was forced to grow up.

Her mother had spoken of sacrifice, of the things she had to give up for her the people she loved, and Jet gets it. But she will spend her last moments with her sister, finding her childhood again.

In the distance, Lazi Fierce’s Lingerie Store stands. This is the end.

Before her sister can pull out her thieves’ tools and pick the front door, Jet hugs her as hard as she can. Ruby, taken aback, makes a surprised sound, but hugs her back almost immediately.

“You’re the best twin sister I ever could’ve asked for, you know?” Jet says, fierce.

Ruby giggles. “I’m your only twin sister.”

“Still,” Jet says, into her sister’s neck. “Thank you. You made all of this worth it.”

“We haven’t even gotten inside yet!”

“I know!” Jet laughs wetly. She pulls away and raises her pinky finger. “I love you so, so much.”

Ruby wraps her own around it. “I love you too.”

And despite seeing her death on the horizon, Jet Rocks smiles.

——————————

There’s still light.

The locket on her chest is pulsing gently, warmly, with the tiniest pink glow. It takes all Jet’s energy to move her hand up to clutch it, but she does.

The thought comes to her calmly: she’s dying.

It is not the glorious warrior’s death she wanted, bleeding out in the attic of a lingerie shop. Jet finds that she doesn’t care.

Ruby is safe. She got away—Jet can feel her pulsing in the tiny locket around her chest.

Dying hurts, Jet thinks, as she clutches her twin sister’s locket, as Liam squeezes her other hand and tries and fails to stem the bleeding in her gut, to stop the water corroding her body—it hurts.

“Tell Ruby I love her,” she gasps, as she squeezes Liam’s hand as hard as she can. “And tell her she did the right thing.”

It hurts—

And then Jet doesn’t feel anything anymore.

Amethar opens his eyes.

He’s falling.

There is a knife in his back and endless pain in his limbs as a familiar poison courses through it, and he knows like you do in dreams that this—this is the very first time.

The moment before the very first loop.

The seconds pass like days as he falls.

All the time in the world has passed, and yet none of it at all.

The ground comes steadily closer, and there is nothing but the darkness of the night, the agony in his limbs, and the echoing harshness of Calroy’s voice.

There is a soft light at the corner of his eye—Amethar turns to face it move across the horizon, and can’t quite process what he’s seeing.

Except he can, this time. He always could.

The small figure of Princess Ruby Rocks runs across Dulcington bridge, and even from here Amethar can see the grief in her as she sprints. And he can see the fading glow of the Locket of the Sweetest Heart.

The light flickers out.

Amethar sees it fade as if it's right in front of him, as he reaches out to the open air in desperation, and again— _again, again, again_ —he is unable to stop it. Unable to make any difference to save those he loves.

Time stills—

stops—

begins again—

He's falling.

There is a deep primal rage burning in his blood—Amethar thinks before he ever knew anger, he knew grief. 

No more loops. No more waking up on the ship to everything being back to the way it was. This is the first loop—and the last one.

_Fall, or rise._

As if rising had ever been easy for him, as if every morning after his sisters' deaths had been easy for him. As if putting the soles of his feet on the ground and demanding them to be steady had ever been easy for him.

Jet is dead. 

Life is cruel, and it takes and it takes and it takes, and Amethar is standing at the castle balustrade wishing he could freeze time right then and there—

And then he isn’t.

And time ticks relentlessly on.

And Amethar makes a choice.

He thinks, _what would Jet do?_

And he thinks, _she would keep fighting._

She would say his title as the Unfallen isn’t an empty one. She would say, _get up. Get up and keep going, because—_

Amethar’s last thought before the rage consumes him is: _Ruby._

_“From the dust and rubble, the King of Candia stands, having fallen from the height of his own castle, alive, as the sounds of war erupt.”_

**Author's Note:**

> [one final song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czFgKa7YcIQ). 
> 
> thank you for reading! you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kindlestuck) or [tumblr](https://kindlespark.tumblr.com)


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